Start off with whatever you wanna be, choose class at say lvl 20 if max out at 60 or so. Then you can group to fight and collect drop items. Even raid. But items that you get from monsters, need to be crafted by a high lvl crafter. This way, you still need to raid to get the item and also you need a high lvl crafter to craft that item, you took 40 people to raided it for. We dont lose the importance of raiding + crafter still very important. Took me 3 mins to think, help me out.
Lets face it folks, if you take crafting away you lose a huge part of the game. Having said that I do agree with Frank to an extent - crafters do have far too much power sometimes.
There has to be a balance. Short of forming some sort of MMO traders association to regulate prices, I think you have to lessen their combat abilities in some way.
Crafting and player controlled economies are good, in my opinion. It attracts different types of players, promotes interdependence, and adds to the social interaction of the game. Personally, I like anything that increases my options on how to play the game.
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
If you don't like crafting, mmog or mmofps for you.
Know what I hate? The flip side to the crafting/lemming comment.
You know, running around wasting time killing monster after monster after monster after boss anfter boss in hopes that some uber-item will drop so you can fulfill your gear-centric fantasies.
No thanks.
Crafters should be essential, and dedicated crafters should be able to create really unique, powerful gear. Its another avenue of play and a potent one.
Permadeath and environmental challenges are the next great step in the evolution of MMORPGs. Only through true adversity will one feel accomplished. Only in truly knowing you can die will true adversity present itself.
I haven't read every post but I think one thing has been missed. I see a lot of post about prices of everthing going up and greedy crafters. Does anyone remember the rug segments in SWG? I always wanted to try and put one together but couldn't afford to, and that was a drop item, not crafted. Who were the greedy ones? . IMO one of the problems is the game world is static while more money is injected into the game through missions. With more money in the game and the same level of taxes/travel/etc... taking out money, prices are going to go up.
In SWG I remember haveing to worry about traveling because of the cost. I don't think prices for traveling, along with many other things in the game has risen. I don't know because I haven't played in a long time. Anyways, if money is getting injected into the game and little or nothing to take money out of the game, prices are going to go up. This situation gets worse and worse for newer/casual players. The way SWG tried to fix the problem has made crafting useless. If you put price controls on items it will be the same as price controls in RL. Crafters will just quit and find another game.
Personally I find it boring to find item in NPC shop and say"ok I need x amout to get this so off I go to get it" Player economy just adds to the complexity and fun of the game. EVE has it right. Let the players decide. If something is out of balance then fix it yourself.
Heres my background FFXI 1.5 years EQOA 1.5 years EVE ONLINE 5 months PLANETSIDE 5 months
If crafting is made so its important and a necessity.....
Then everyone would need to craft in order to keep up with everyone else armor/weapons. WHICH WOULD SUCK CUZ MOST PEOPLE HATE CRAFTING. It would be a real turn off if crafting would be made a necessity in the current model of MMO's right now. If someone really wants that cool sword or armor there gunna buy it from there friendly crafter frend right... WRONG. Thats the way it should be though but thats not what happens. The people who need it really bad are gunna craft it themselves. Crafting is just if you get satisfaction from helping someone out. THATS ALL. Its sad but true. For right now theres really nothing different gunna be made other than what the devs are doing with FULL AUTO. Listen to the podcast about crafting with that game its really interesting.
phunkymonkeys got it wrong i think. I think crafting in and of itself is practically useless. The crafting community likes to help out others but when other people can just craft the things they need then it really doesnt matter..... EVEN IF THERES A SEPERATE CRAFTING CLASS.
Is there an MMO that out there that isn't affected by Xao Ping Wang and their money grubbing macro bots? http://wow.stratics.com/content/features/editorials/mf/ Just say no to ingame money/mob farming.... the site says it all
Originally posted by skeezixs 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.
I voted everything should be tradeable. Sometimes people ninja accidentally and having everything be tradeable allows for people to make ammends. Also, if someone goes and makes the shield of everlasting uberblock or w/e and joe buys it but after awhile he outgrows it then why shouldnt he be able to turn around and sell it to sally? There should be some sort of mechanic in place like wear and tear thereby reducing the value, somewhat, on the point of resale.
Originally posted by thaihouse Hmm...how about this? Start off with whatever you wanna be, choose class at say lvl 20 if max out at 60 or so. Then you can group to fight and collect drop items. Even raid. But items that you get from monsters, need to be crafted by a high lvl crafter. This way, you still need to raid to get the item and also you need a high lvl crafter to craft that item, you took 40 people to raided it for. We dont lose the importance of raiding + crafter still very important. Took me 3 mins to think, help me out.
Sounds ALOT like Lineage2. And in a grindfest sort of game I guess thats acceptable. But why should someone who has no desire for combat be forced into it? This is one thing that crafting allows for... choice. Not a petty and pathetic crafting system like wow, but a real crafting system. One that takes time and effort, as much if not moreso than combat, to get right. Just because someone has a master title by thier name or w/e does not make them a master, it takes a great deal of skill, knowledge and patience in order to perfect a craft. If someone doesnt want to be a crafter then that too is fine. More games need to provide more options for players rather then hemming them in like most asian mmo's do.
There was a comment about lemmings in the original argument. Isn't the endless cycle of raid raid raid raid raid and hope and pray for a drop but then raid raid raid raid raid again the SAME dungeon and the SAME mobs the epitome of being a lemming?
I despise crafting and crafters. I can't stand being dependent on them and there is nothing and I mean nothing fun about grinding cash to pay for puking items. I want to adventure and get my crap for free, THAT is fun! If I wanted to play a simulation of the NY Stock Exchange, I'd do it as my job and actually have an impact on my life. There is a reason why games like Horizons and DAoC have never had the truly great number of subscribers that WoW and EQ1 & EQ2 have had and that's because they were so completely dependent on crafting that adventuring lost a lot of its appeal. Even Mythic realized this and eventually started adding decent item drops.
Lets face it, no matter how you set it up, adventuring and crafting are competing play styles. You can't have crafting in the game without demeaning adventuring by shifting the loot focus one way or the other. I mean, if you have dropped loot as good as crafting, no one would bother with the crafted, therefore you get this bias towards crafted gear. It sure is fun to kill off some big baddie and have him drop a cool piece of gear, for free. Its a tedious grind and usually frustrating to have to earn cash to pay off some schmuck for some crafted gear.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
Is there an MMO that out there that isn't affected by Xao Ping Wang and their money grubbing macro bots? http://wow.stratics.com/content/features/editorials/mf/ Just say no to ingame money/mob farming.... the site says it all
everyone starts out with customizable character, can look whatever they like say 2000+ naked skin looks. You could be as little as you want, as tall as you want, as dark as light as you want. Everyone starts with NO skill. Everything is learned. You pick up a stick, you swing, you miss you learned Blunt weapon. You pick up sword from the ground u swing, u learn sword. and let say, you wanna be better at sword you go consult an expert in town, say weaponmaster in your town to learn. say at lvl 15 u hate sword, u pick up or got a staff from monster, u go talk to another expert from another town you happen to find on your journey. You learn to be mage and the mage world goes from there. You wanna be crafter, that's fine. Pick some flowers, some hinds and go to some town learn from some master u can create some stuff. You wanna craft better stuff, take a hike talk to someone...go to more dangerous zone to find the stuff you want. Recipe of your choice is created based on simply RL physics, such as mud + water + some time + air gives hardened clay etc. trials and errors, once learned you can then sell the recipe to market through market system. Other crafters can learn from you, and maybe improve? modify? resell recipe. There's always dropped item from monster, or boss from raid. But crafting item will be different, more customizable, not always fixed in stats and if the item is very good; classify as very high end crafting, crafter can name it and create the look of it. If the world is so huge and seamless, you can't spend 3 years of your RL to explore everything. And with consistently upgrade, every patch will add new world and/or decrease some of the old stuff. ie, your old master you learned sword from died...or something like that, but the skill can be learned from other master elsewhere, you dont know unless you heard from your friend or explore yourself. So at lvl 60, you met your match in a pvp rink, he's also lvl 60 but you both have diff. skill because you learn from different master that you have met through your journey. Sounds fun to me. I dunno...what u think?
I think that crafting is very important to a well balanced game. The problem is that any inbalance anywhere else is going to cause an inbalance in the crafting system and the economy. The other major problem is that almost all games out there right now are essentially static. The items, npcs, and mobs remain virtually unchanged despite the fact that as a game grows there are more players with more money and what might have been balanced at first very rapidly gets unbalanced as players with more time and money can create alt accounts and form powerful guilds that have no checks put on them by the game. EVE has a very good system with a very strong player run economy but it also has a dynamic storyline that actually changes with the actions of the people in the game. The dynamic nature of the game insures that most problems, including most of the the complaints ive read about crafting, seem to solve themselves or at least cancel each other out. This is in stark contrast to the fairly static setup in most games. In most of the games, the number of players, and thus the amount of player money, increases while mob drops and npc prices stay the same, setting up a very unbalanced economy, regardless of whether its craft or drop based.
I believe crafting is the best parts of any MMORPG. One, if you get tired of questing, or the kill this, kill that mentality, it gives you something else to do in the game. Plus it lets you feel another sense of accomplishment for your characters.
As for the idea of having crafters make the same items as merchants, I like that player created stuff is better. It makes it a bit more of a challenge to get the best items. And I have no problem with crafters selling things at different rates. It just means you have to shop around a bit. I personally have found many crafters who don't charge ridiculous prices. If you think someone is charging too much, just try elsewhere.
Frank also said that if someone charges a little more, then everyone will hike their prices. This is not universally true. Sure, some folks might. I have always kept my prices the same, even if others may be getting more. I have built up a very nice customer base that way. People tend to come back to me because I don't take all their money. From my experience, the best crafters always follow that line of thinking.
Ok, I've rambled on enough. Basically, crafting is fun, and I believe, an essential element to any good game.
Originally posted by Bhob 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.
The market is driven to what people are willing to pay. I put up things on the market and if they don't sell, I lower the price. The problem arises when people have more money than they know what to do with and the 'value' becomes trivial. If people can play within the game, it usually isn't a problem.
Your runaway economy also occurs with games that have no crafting. Guild Wars, has no crafting and people are willing to pay outrageous prices in the gameworld for dropped items. People bitch and moan about it, yet keep on playing.
So the problem is too much money and not enough stuff to spend it on. How about a cost-of-living system in which the more money you spend on non-essentials (and some essentials such as food and lodgings) the better your toon's reputation. That improves your toons circle of contacts and gets you better missions and things. After all the king is more likely to send Baron Bling off to slay the Dragon of Dispair than Peter the Pox-ridden Peasant.
Puzzle Pirates has a crafting system that seems to work well. Its expensive to set up a shop, stall or other business. Every toon has an alotted number of work hours that they can automatically dedicate to some sort of business and some crafting tasks, such as alchemy, shipbuilding, distilling, amongst others have puzzles associated with them. Each business sets its wages and jobbing charatcers dedicate some of their work hours to a business. The better the wages the more people will work for you, the more things you produce and the quicker they're done. If there's an associated puzzle you can even get people working overtime.
So if you're a shipwright you have your expenses in setting up your shipyard, paying wages and taxes. Someone orders a sloop from you at a pre-arranged price (arranged between yourself and the customer). The more you charge the more wages you can pay and the quicker the ship can be built. However if another shipwright is charging less and the customer is prepared to wait longer for their sloop to be finished they can effectively under cut you. Often the customer will work on their own ship to speed up the process and get an effective discount (they get paid wages just like everyone else on the job). However that's a situation in which the craftsman is a coordinator and the people who do the work don't really need to be skilled in the craft. Although being good at doing the puzzle helps.
I almost forgot to mention entropy. Puzzle Pirates has clothing that falls apart with excessive use, equipment that breaks and dozens of other stuff. Once your clothes start to rot off your back you need to buy more, and they're expensive. If you don't want your really good stuff to rot away you have to keep it at home in a wardrobe, which you have to pay for. Money sink, money sink, rah rah rah!
With entropy who is going to pay real money for virtual stuff that's eventually going to break or rot away?
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference." -- The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Some like to slay dragons, some like to craft that nice magical sword. Some like to buy low and sell high. Some like to just explore the map and some just like to drop in and chat with friends.
I've yet to see a game where you were absolutely dependent on a crafting cartel to be competitive.
WoW's crafting system could not compete with dropped loot. Since dropped loot and crafted items competed in the auction house...
EQ crafting was a joke.
DAoC crafting is well done in my opinion. When it started, while you weren't forced to buy crafted stuff it was strongly recommended to do so. It did not seem a problem back then, though, as players would often sell around merchant prices for better quality. Nowadays, you have more drops from PvE. You can also farm aurulite (which is basically an alternative to gold which allows you to buy enchanted items from NPCs at fixed prices) and darkness fall seals (same concept, different NPCs).
Also, crafting in DAoC is extremely tedious. It takes a lot of time and gold to get to the legendary level. I never leveled one to legendary but I imagine it takes as much time as leveling your character to level 50 (max level).
One balancing factor is if you don't want to craft or buy from crafters, you can drop loot which is about the same quality (maybe better but not overly so) but you are prey to the randomness of drops and stats. If you buy from crafters you get good quality stuff tweaked exactly to your specifications (skill/stat/resists) but you are dependent on finding a crafter willing to do the work at the price you're willing to pay.
Supply and demand works a lot in WoW. If people are willing to pay outrageous prices for an item, then that's what it's worth. If you're willing (even if you don't like it) to farm the gold to buy the item, then even you think it's worth it.
At worst, it's worth not making another char or moving to another game because your character is unplayable without the item (have yet to see such a valuable item in a game that it cripples a class not to have it).
In my opinion, there aren't enough gold buyers to inflate these prices permanently. If someone else is willing to buy at an outrageous price, why should someone sell for less? If no one is willing to buy, either the price will drop or the item won't get made anymore.
I totally agree, SWG pre-CU featured the most fantastic crafting system which balanced very smoothly with the rest of the game.
I myself enjoyed very much my BE business (BE was the most intricate and complex crafting branch ever seen in any game) and loved the fact that i could even have fight skills so i could go join hunts etc. if i was in the mood.
PLLSSSS make classic SWG servers, ill pay 9999999999999 $ i so miss my BE time in SWG.
Crafters aren't a money making powerhouse unless they are shrewd. Crafters have to work hard and have a nice bankroll. Just like a combat player can go out and do quests/missions/loot for money. Crafters have to subsist off of their crafting ability. Crafters then also have to pay money for resources to build items.
Crafting has been a mainstay of RPGs for a long time. Diablo II even had crafting with the cube, and Diablo II was mostly a loot based economy. Looting something and trading it is fun, but so is looting something and knowing you can sell it to a crafter or if you have a crafter friend they can make it better than it already is.
Decay/Destruction of items. Items need to be destroyed or decayed in some form, otherwise the items database of any MMORPG would fill up quicker then the line at the bar when last call is announced.
I enjoy crafting. I enjoy combat too, but I recognize both are different worlds from each other.
Horizons has been mentioned a few times already, but not by any active players. I think Horizons may be Frank's nightmare world, but for an older player that enjoys building and likes crafting, it's an awesome environment to play in.
Horizons has a decent amount of crafter-adventurer interdependance - crafters have to either level adventurer themselves, or have bodyguards in the highest-tier resource areas. Making the best gear requires lots of componants dropped from tough critters, and a good hunter can make decent coin selling those componants. The most elite items are obtained from boss mobs as multi-part drops; they have to be combined by a high-level crafter who has the correct formula, which itself is a drop. Some dropped gear is a lot better than anything crafted, but it decays and smells like a fermenting diaper pail.
The economy is not perfect - far from it. Crafters can make a ton of cash easily at high levels; this is being worked on, but still has not been addressed. Componant prices are artificially capped, but this is as good for the adventurer as it is bad. It means a certain degree of affordability for the best equipment; some rare comps would be 5-6 times more expensive than they are currently, and a player who cannot hunt those critters would be screwed without the NPC-imposed price caps. Dragons have another set of issues in that there are items they need but cannot themselves make and must obtain from bipeds. The reverse is not true; there are no items bipeds require that can only be crafted by dragons.
I'll say again, the economy in Horizons has some serious issues. It is far from perfect. What it does offer is a detailed, flexible, and complex crafting system which is fundamentally integrated into the game world and game system. If you're going to talk about crafting in MMOs, Horizons is a much better example of a crafting game than WoW or EQ2.
Even if the crafter decides to charge a lot for the best items, in most games you can get by with items that are slightly lower in stats yet half the price. Crafting adds more content to the game and there is really no reason for it not to be in.
i think crafting needs to be balanced with combat, such as making ANYTHING and everything u can find, craftable NOTE: ill use WoW as an example because most ppl know of the game or at least how simple it is
how? well for starters, crafter A has to learn a recipe, blueprint, ect. ect., THEN that person tries to craft it, (like WoW, so its a 100% success rate), when crafter A makes it, that person then gets a basic piece of that item
EDIT: if u read this line, forget about it, im too tired today
here's where the crafting changes, merchants can sell those items off (they are easily made, but there's a wide range of them) then ppl can take those items to an NPC and those NPCs can add something to them (they become no-drop/no-trade after that)
that something can range from an enchantment, to a special effect (like WoW uses prefixes and suffixes for different effects), to a visual effect, or even a completely new upgrade (like a plate mail breastplate can be turned into a Dark Dragon Scale Armor)
NPCs differ along with their quest to get these improvements, each quest could be something simple to something that takes a long time (like going through a raid dungeon in WoW, except u would always get that item u want)
differences between crafting and combat? if u go through a "raid dungeon" u should obviously be able to get better things then if u craft, because its more of a chance and possibly alot more time
my opinion is obviously, "the less of a chance there is and the more time you spend on something, the better it should be"
Originally posted by taraza Even if the crafter decides to charge a lot for the best items, in most games you can get by with items that are slightly lower in stats yet half the price. Crafting adds more content to the game and there is really no reason for it not to be in.
The other thing is the prices usually stabilize, if one player finds out that a certain item is well out of its price cost, they will go and try to cut into that marketshare, by undercutting the competition. The competition will notice and decide, "hey this undercutter guy can't outproduce me!", so he undercuts the undercutter and thus begins the price wars, because crafters usually like to make money, but they also don't like their product sitting and taking up space.
Take EVE Online's system, theoratically a handful of players could control all the blueprints for a certain item, and then these players could start their monopoly, if all the players decided "we will not charge less than x for this item that we own most if not all of the blueprints too, then the players will only be able to buy it from us for that price.
Eventually the prices stabilize or players won't pay for those items, and will subsist off other lesser items.
Well I have played and crafted in 2 MMORPG games. EQ and WoW. Actually 3 I did AC2 for a bit. I think Crafting makes the game more interesting. I don't have a lot of time to play and when I don't I can work on my crafting. EQ was a pain to craft in. You could and I did work on all the different crating skills save a few. But the failure rate was a pain and you lost lots of money trying to make an item that was green to your crafting skill. I play WoW now and craft and love it. No failures which is great. The big draw back I do see in it and this was in EQ as well. You craft and item that cost you (using WoW ) a good deal at the higher skill for mats (materials) some of which to go and get take a very long time due to the drop rate. IE... My husband was doing Blacksmithing and one item he could make was really nice weapon but by the time he bought or gathered the materials and got the transmutes done (which take days 40 some for what was needed for that weapon!) Transmute time is awful!!!! To sell the weapon for what it cost to make it would be very costly and no one would prob buy it. This is something that they really need to work on. All the games I have played anyway. Because no one wants to spend their time and money making something and then have to sell it for less than half what it cost to make it. Just like that one weapon one of the items needed cost from 250g to 500g!! To go farm it takes long hours because the drop rate is something like .03 ... In the respect of cost vs sale price I find that most games just are not balanced. It is also true that the items dropped end game are much nicer than anything a crafter can make. All in all I believe crafting is good for the game. I just think they need to be balanced a bit more as far as cost to make vs what the crafter can sell the item for. I mean even in RL when someone makes something they make a profit some things more than others.
Crafting adds a dynamic playstyle to the game, especially if it is CvC.
First, though, it adds that diversity besides killing monsters or attacking other players. It provides resource-based content (monster drops, ores, lumber, etc.) which all worlds need. Certainly those NPC crafters and NPC merchants had a way to sell those items. The Wish beta was great for this - tasks to gather resources, make items, and the NPCs had limited items.
Aside from its multiclassing system, Horizons is still a good system, just to many player conveniences related to it. Still adventure-types could provide those monster reagents for crafter-types to make into items, both benefitted (until a character did both).
On the economy side, Saga of Ryzom had an excellent system - NPCs were "maxed" of how much characters could charge for reselling items through them. Thus those "greedy" characters would need to "corner" the market AND stay online, in a populated area, to sell their overpriced goods . . . . not likely (especially when a guild could powerlevel their crafter by providing monster reagents).
Developed properly, crafting adds to the CvC aspect of a game (or PvP for those liking to whack and loot). Resources - monsters, forests, mines, trade routes, etc. - need to be controlled. Control that source of mithril ore and thus control the flow of mithril-based items. Thus it becomes a contested area. This adds a purpose for PvP, making it CvC. Conquest-style games based on this, such as The Cronicle, Darkfall Online, Trials of Ascension, and likely others add a stategic level to the game.
The way I see it, if you don't like crafting then it seems you prefer an action-style game. And if you don't like the social interaction the crafting side provides then why not play single player games or NWN persistent worlds? Why should there only be NPC crafters and merchants without NPC adventure-types also attacking monsters and other characters?
Comments
Hmm...how about this?
Start off with whatever you wanna be, choose class at say lvl 20 if max out at 60 or so. Then you can group to fight and collect drop items. Even raid. But items that you get from monsters, need to be crafted by a high lvl crafter. This way, you still need to raid to get the item and also you need a high lvl crafter to craft that item, you took 40 people to raided it for. We dont lose the importance of raiding + crafter still very important. Took me 3 mins to think, help me out.
Lets face it folks, if you take crafting away you lose a huge part of the game. Having said that I do agree with Frank to an extent - crafters do have far too much power sometimes.
There has to be a balance. Short of forming some sort of MMO traders association to regulate prices, I think you have to lessen their combat abilities in some way.
Good debate though!
Crafting and player controlled economies are good, in my opinion. It attracts different types of players, promotes interdependence, and adds to the social interaction of the game. Personally, I like anything that increases my options on how to play the game.
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
If you don't like crafting, mmog or mmofps for you.
Know what I hate? The flip side to the crafting/lemming comment.
You know, running around wasting time killing monster after monster after monster after boss anfter boss in hopes that some uber-item will drop so you can fulfill your gear-centric fantasies.
No thanks.
Crafters should be essential, and dedicated crafters should be able to create really unique, powerful gear. Its another avenue of play and a potent one.
Permadeath and environmental challenges are the next great step in the evolution of MMORPGs. Only through true adversity will one feel accomplished. Only in truly knowing you can die will true adversity present itself.
I haven't read every post but I think one thing has been missed. I see a lot of post about prices of everthing going up and greedy crafters. Does anyone remember the rug segments in SWG? I always wanted to try and put one together but couldn't afford to, and that was a drop item, not crafted. Who were the greedy ones? . IMO one of the problems is the game world is static while more money is injected into the game through missions. With more money in the game and the same level of taxes/travel/etc... taking out money, prices are going to go up.
In SWG I remember haveing to worry about traveling because of the cost. I don't think prices for traveling, along with many other things in the game has risen. I don't know because I haven't played in a long time. Anyways, if money is getting injected into the game and little or nothing to take money out of the game, prices are going to go up. This situation gets worse and worse for newer/casual players. The way SWG tried to fix the problem has made crafting useless. If you put price controls on items it will be the same as price controls in RL. Crafters will just quit and find another game.
Personally I find it boring to find item in NPC shop and say"ok I need x amout to get this so off I go to get it" Player economy just adds to the complexity and fun of the game. EVE has it right. Let the players decide. If something is out of balance then fix it yourself.
Heres my background
FFXI 1.5 years
EQOA 1.5 years
EVE ONLINE 5 months
PLANETSIDE 5 months
If crafting is made so its important and a necessity.....
Then everyone would need to craft in order to keep up with everyone else armor/weapons. WHICH WOULD SUCK CUZ MOST PEOPLE HATE CRAFTING. It would be a real turn off if crafting would be made a necessity in the current model of MMO's right now. If someone really wants that cool sword or armor there gunna buy it from there friendly crafter frend right... WRONG. Thats the way it should be though but thats not what happens. The people who need it really bad are gunna craft it themselves. Crafting is just if you get satisfaction from helping someone out. THATS ALL. Its sad but true. For right now theres really nothing different gunna be made other than what the devs are doing with FULL AUTO. Listen to the podcast about crafting with that game its really interesting.
phunkymonkeys got it wrong i think. I think crafting in and of itself is practically useless. The crafting community likes to help out others but when other people can just craft the things they need then it really doesnt matter..... EVEN IF THERES A SEPERATE CRAFTING CLASS.
Is there an MMO that out there that isn't affected by Xao Ping Wang and their money grubbing macro bots?
http://wow.stratics.com/content/features/editorials/mf/
Just say no to ingame money/mob farming.... the site says it all
I voted everything should be tradeable. Sometimes people ninja accidentally and having everything be tradeable allows for people to make ammends. Also, if someone goes and makes the shield of everlasting uberblock or w/e and joe buys it but after awhile he outgrows it then why shouldnt he be able to turn around and sell it to sally? There should be some sort of mechanic in place like wear and tear thereby reducing the value, somewhat, on the point of resale.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
Crafting is what made the world go around in FFXI.
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Sounds ALOT like Lineage2. And in a grindfest sort of game I guess thats acceptable. But why should someone who has no desire for combat be forced into it? This is one thing that crafting allows for... choice. Not a petty and pathetic crafting system like wow, but a real crafting system. One that takes time and effort, as much if not moreso than combat, to get right. Just because someone has a master title by thier name or w/e does not make them a master, it takes a great deal of skill, knowledge and patience in order to perfect a craft. If someone doesnt want to be a crafter then that too is fine. More games need to provide more options for players rather then hemming them in like most asian mmo's do.
There was a comment about lemmings in the original argument. Isn't the endless cycle of raid raid raid raid raid and hope and pray for a drop but then raid raid raid raid raid again the SAME dungeon and the SAME mobs the epitome of being a lemming?
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
I despise crafting and crafters. I can't stand being dependent on them and there is nothing and I mean nothing fun about grinding cash to pay for puking items. I want to adventure and get my crap for free, THAT is fun! If I wanted to play a simulation of the NY Stock Exchange, I'd do it as my job and actually have an impact on my life. There is a reason why games like Horizons and DAoC have never had the truly great number of subscribers that WoW and EQ1 & EQ2 have had and that's because they were so completely dependent on crafting that adventuring lost a lot of its appeal. Even Mythic realized this and eventually started adding decent item drops.
Lets face it, no matter how you set it up, adventuring and crafting are competing play styles. You can't have crafting in the game without demeaning adventuring by shifting the loot focus one way or the other. I mean, if you have dropped loot as good as crafting, no one would bother with the crafted, therefore you get this bias towards crafted gear. It sure is fun to kill off some big baddie and have him drop a cool piece of gear, for free. Its a tedious grind and usually frustrating to have to earn cash to pay off some schmuck for some crafted gear.
With PvE raiding, it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fawning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression, anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privilege. - Neanderthal
i TOTALLY agree with vazulile
Is there an MMO that out there that isn't affected by Xao Ping Wang and their money grubbing macro bots?
http://wow.stratics.com/content/features/editorials/mf/
Just say no to ingame money/mob farming.... the site says it all
Maybe, if there's a game where:
everyone starts out with customizable character, can look whatever they like say 2000+ naked skin looks. You could be as little as you want, as tall as you want, as dark as light as you want. Everyone starts with NO skill. Everything is learned. You pick up a stick, you swing, you miss you learned Blunt weapon. You pick up sword from the ground u swing, u learn sword. and let say, you wanna be better at sword you go consult an expert in town, say weaponmaster in your town to learn. say at lvl 15 u hate sword, u pick up or got a staff from monster, u go talk to another expert from another town you happen to find on your journey. You learn to be mage and the mage world goes from there. You wanna be crafter, that's fine. Pick some flowers, some hinds and go to some town learn from some master u can create some stuff. You wanna craft better stuff, take a hike talk to someone...go to more dangerous zone to find the stuff you want. Recipe of your choice is created based on simply RL physics, such as mud + water + some time + air gives hardened clay etc. trials and errors, once learned you can then sell the recipe to market through market system. Other crafters can learn from you, and maybe improve? modify? resell recipe. There's always dropped item from monster, or boss from raid. But crafting item will be different, more customizable, not always fixed in stats and if the item is very good; classify as very high end crafting, crafter can name it and create the look of it. If the world is so huge and seamless, you can't spend 3 years of your RL to explore everything. And with consistently upgrade, every patch will add new world and/or decrease some of the old stuff. ie, your old master you learned sword from died...or something like that, but the skill can be learned from other master elsewhere, you dont know unless you heard from your friend or explore yourself. So at lvl 60, you met your match in a pvp rink, he's also lvl 60 but you both have diff. skill because you learn from different master that you have met through your journey. Sounds fun to me. I dunno...what u think?
I believe crafting is the best parts of any MMORPG. One, if you get tired of questing, or the kill this, kill that mentality, it gives you something else to do in the game. Plus it lets you feel another sense of accomplishment for your characters.
As for the idea of having crafters make the same items as merchants, I like that player created stuff is better. It makes it a bit more of a challenge to get the best items. And I have no problem with crafters selling things at different rates. It just means you have to shop around a bit. I personally have found many crafters who don't charge ridiculous prices. If you think someone is charging too much, just try elsewhere.
Frank also said that if someone charges a little more, then everyone will hike their prices. This is not universally true. Sure, some folks might. I have always kept my prices the same, even if others may be getting more. I have built up a very nice customer base that way. People tend to come back to me because I don't take all their money. From my experience, the best crafters always follow that line of thinking.
Ok, I've rambled on enough. Basically, crafting is fun, and I believe, an essential element to any good game.
The market is driven to what people are willing to pay. I put up things on the market and if they don't sell, I lower the price. The problem arises when people have more money than they know what to do with and the 'value' becomes trivial. If people can play within the game, it usually isn't a problem.
Your runaway economy also occurs with games that have no crafting. Guild Wars, has no crafting and people are willing to pay outrageous prices in the gameworld for dropped items. People bitch and moan about it, yet keep on playing.
So the problem is too much money and not enough stuff to spend it on. How about a cost-of-living system in which the more money you spend on non-essentials (and some essentials such as food and lodgings) the better your toon's reputation. That improves your toons circle of contacts and gets you better missions and things. After all the king is more likely to send Baron Bling off to slay the Dragon of Dispair than Peter the Pox-ridden Peasant.
Puzzle Pirates has a crafting system that seems to work well. Its expensive to set up a shop, stall or other business. Every toon has an alotted number of work hours that they can automatically dedicate to some sort of business and some crafting tasks, such as alchemy, shipbuilding, distilling, amongst others have puzzles associated with them. Each business sets its wages and jobbing charatcers dedicate some of their work hours to a business. The better the wages the more people will work for you, the more things you produce and the quicker they're done. If there's an associated puzzle you can even get people working overtime.
So if you're a shipwright you have your expenses in setting up your shipyard, paying wages and taxes. Someone orders a sloop from you at a pre-arranged price (arranged between yourself and the customer). The more you charge the more wages you can pay and the quicker the ship can be built. However if another shipwright is charging less and the customer is prepared to wait longer for their sloop to be finished they can effectively under cut you. Often the customer will work on their own ship to speed up the process and get an effective discount (they get paid wages just like everyone else on the job). However that's a situation in which the craftsman is a coordinator and the people who do the work don't really need to be skilled in the craft. Although being good at doing the puzzle helps.
I almost forgot to mention entropy. Puzzle Pirates has clothing that falls apart with excessive use, equipment that breaks and dozens of other stuff. Once your clothes start to rot off your back you need to buy more, and they're expensive. If you don't want your really good stuff to rot away you have to keep it at home in a wardrobe, which you have to pay for. Money sink, money sink, rah rah rah!
With entropy who is going to pay real money for virtual stuff that's eventually going to break or rot away?
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference."
-- The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost
Some like to slay dragons, some like to craft that nice magical sword. Some like to buy low and sell high. Some like to just explore the map and some just like to drop in and chat with friends.
I've yet to see a game where you were absolutely dependent on a crafting cartel to be competitive.
WoW's crafting system could not compete with dropped loot. Since dropped loot and crafted items competed in the auction house...
EQ crafting was a joke.
DAoC crafting is well done in my opinion. When it started, while you weren't forced to buy crafted stuff it was strongly recommended to do so. It did not seem a problem back then, though, as players would often sell around merchant prices for better quality. Nowadays, you have more drops from PvE. You can also farm aurulite (which is basically an alternative to gold which allows you to buy enchanted items from NPCs at fixed prices) and darkness fall seals (same concept, different NPCs).
Also, crafting in DAoC is extremely tedious. It takes a lot of time and gold to get to the legendary level. I never leveled one to legendary but I imagine it takes as much time as leveling your character to level 50 (max level).
One balancing factor is if you don't want to craft or buy from crafters, you can drop loot which is about the same quality (maybe better but not overly so) but you are prey to the randomness of drops and stats. If you buy from crafters you get good quality stuff tweaked exactly to your specifications (skill/stat/resists) but you are dependent on finding a crafter willing to do the work at the price you're willing to pay.
Supply and demand works a lot in WoW. If people are willing to pay outrageous prices for an item, then that's what it's worth. If you're willing (even if you don't like it) to farm the gold to buy the item, then even you think it's worth it.
At worst, it's worth not making another char or moving to another game because your character is unplayable without the item (have yet to see such a valuable item in a game that it cripples a class not to have it).
In my opinion, there aren't enough gold buyers to inflate these prices permanently. If someone else is willing to buy at an outrageous price, why should someone sell for less? If no one is willing to buy, either the price will drop or the item won't get made anymore.
I totally agree, SWG pre-CU featured the most fantastic crafting system which balanced very smoothly with the rest of the game.
I myself enjoyed very much my BE business (BE was the most intricate and complex crafting branch ever seen in any game) and loved the fact that i could even have fight skills so i could go join hunts etc. if i was in the mood.
PLLSSSS make classic SWG servers, ill pay 9999999999999 $ i so miss my BE time in SWG.
brgds Nicolai
Yes, I agree crafting was fun with Pre-CU SWG.
Crafting is a necessity.
Crafters aren't a money making powerhouse unless they are shrewd. Crafters have to work hard and have a nice bankroll. Just like a combat player can go out and do quests/missions/loot for money. Crafters have to subsist off of their crafting ability. Crafters then also have to pay money for resources to build items.
Crafting has been a mainstay of RPGs for a long time. Diablo II even had crafting with the cube, and Diablo II was mostly a loot based economy. Looting something and trading it is fun, but so is looting something and knowing you can sell it to a crafter or if you have a crafter friend they can make it better than it already is.
Decay/Destruction of items. Items need to be destroyed or decayed in some form, otherwise the items database of any MMORPG would fill up quicker then the line at the bar when last call is announced.
I enjoy crafting. I enjoy combat too, but I recognize both are different worlds from each other.
Horizons has been mentioned a few times already, but not by any active players. I think Horizons may be Frank's nightmare world, but for an older player that enjoys building and likes crafting, it's an awesome environment to play in.
Horizons has a decent amount of crafter-adventurer interdependance - crafters have to either level adventurer themselves, or have bodyguards in the highest-tier resource areas. Making the best gear requires lots of componants dropped from tough critters, and a good hunter can make decent coin selling those componants. The most elite items are obtained from boss mobs as multi-part drops; they have to be combined by a high-level crafter who has the correct formula, which itself is a drop. Some dropped gear is a lot better than anything crafted, but it decays and smells like a fermenting diaper pail.
The economy is not perfect - far from it. Crafters can make a ton of cash easily at high levels; this is being worked on, but still has not been addressed. Componant prices are artificially capped, but this is as good for the adventurer as it is bad. It means a certain degree of affordability for the best equipment; some rare comps would be 5-6 times more expensive than they are currently, and a player who cannot hunt those critters would be screwed without the NPC-imposed price caps. Dragons have another set of issues in that there are items they need but cannot themselves make and must obtain from bipeds. The reverse is not true; there are no items bipeds require that can only be crafted by dragons.
I'll say again, the economy in Horizons has some serious issues. It is far from perfect. What it does offer is a detailed, flexible, and complex crafting system which is fundamentally integrated into the game world and game system. If you're going to talk about crafting in MMOs, Horizons is a much better example of a crafting game than WoW or EQ2.
Guildleader, Mithril Council, Chaos
Even if the crafter decides to charge a lot for the best items, in most games you can get by with items that are slightly lower in stats yet half the price. Crafting adds more content to the game and there is really no reason for it not to be in.
i think crafting needs to be balanced with combat, such as making ANYTHING and everything u can find, craftable NOTE: ill use WoW as an example because most ppl know of the game or at least how simple it is
how? well for starters, crafter A has to learn a recipe, blueprint, ect. ect., THEN that person tries to craft it, (like WoW, so its a 100% success rate), when crafter A makes it, that person then gets a basic piece of that item
EDIT: if u read this line, forget about it, im too tired today
here's where the crafting changes, merchants can sell those items off (they are easily made, but there's a wide range of them) then ppl can take those items to an NPC and those NPCs can add something to them (they become no-drop/no-trade after that)
that something can range from an enchantment, to a special effect (like WoW uses prefixes and suffixes for different effects), to a visual effect, or even a completely new upgrade (like a plate mail breastplate can be turned into a Dark Dragon Scale Armor)
NPCs differ along with their quest to get these improvements, each quest could be something simple to something that takes a long time (like going through a raid dungeon in WoW, except u would always get that item u want)
differences between crafting and combat? if u go through a "raid dungeon" u should obviously be able to get better things then if u craft, because its more of a chance and possibly alot more time
my opinion is obviously, "the less of a chance there is and the more time you spend on something, the better it should be"
Take EVE Online's system, theoratically a handful of players could control all the blueprints for a certain item, and then these players could start their monopoly, if all the players decided "we will not charge less than x for this item that we own most if not all of the blueprints too, then the players will only be able to buy it from us for that price.
Eventually the prices stabilize or players won't pay for those items, and will subsist off other lesser items.
Well I have played and crafted in 2 MMORPG games. EQ and WoW. Actually 3 I did AC2 for a bit.
I think Crafting makes the game more interesting. I don't have a lot of time to play and when I don't I can work on my crafting.
EQ was a pain to craft in. You could and I did work on all the different crating skills save a few. But the failure rate was a pain and you lost lots of money trying to make an item that was green to your crafting skill.
I play WoW now and craft and love it. No failures which is great. The big draw back I do see in it and this was in EQ as well. You craft and item that cost you (using WoW ) a good deal at the higher skill for mats (materials) some of which to go and get take a very long time due to the drop rate. IE... My husband was doing Blacksmithing and one item he could make was really nice weapon but by the time he bought or gathered the materials and got the transmutes done (which take days 40 some for what was needed for that weapon!) Transmute time is awful!!!!
To sell the weapon for what it cost to make it would be very costly and no one would prob buy it. This is something that they really need to work on. All the games I have played anyway. Because no one wants to spend their time and money making something and then have to sell it for less than half what it cost to make it. Just like that one weapon one of the items needed cost from 250g to 500g!! To go farm it takes long hours because the drop rate is something like .03 ...
In the respect of cost vs sale price I find that most games just are not balanced.
It is also true that the items dropped end game are much nicer than anything a crafter can make.
All in all I believe crafting is good for the game. I just think they need to be balanced a bit more as far as cost to make vs what the crafter can sell the item for. I mean even in RL when someone makes something they make a profit some things more than others.
Gikku
The only kind of crafting I've ever liked has been smithing. I like to play the role of a blacksmith in games,in ol' RuneScape I was a Mage/Smith.
"The one who begins with nothing, gains everything slowly."
Crafting adds a dynamic playstyle to the game, especially if it is CvC.
First, though, it adds that diversity besides killing monsters or attacking other players. It provides resource-based content (monster drops, ores, lumber, etc.) which all worlds need. Certainly those NPC crafters and NPC merchants had a way to sell those items. The Wish beta was great for this - tasks to gather resources, make items, and the NPCs had limited items.
Aside from its multiclassing system, Horizons is still a good system, just to many player conveniences related to it. Still adventure-types could provide those monster reagents for crafter-types to make into items, both benefitted (until a character did both).
On the economy side, Saga of Ryzom had an excellent system - NPCs were "maxed" of how much characters could charge for reselling items through them. Thus those "greedy" characters would need to "corner" the market AND stay online, in a populated area, to sell their overpriced goods . . . . not likely (especially when a guild could powerlevel their crafter by providing monster reagents).
Developed properly, crafting adds to the CvC aspect of a game (or PvP for those liking to whack and loot). Resources - monsters, forests, mines, trade routes, etc. - need to be controlled. Control that source of mithril ore and thus control the flow of mithril-based items. Thus it becomes a contested area. This adds a purpose for PvP, making it CvC. Conquest-style games based on this, such as The Cronicle, Darkfall Online, Trials of Ascension, and likely others add a stategic level to the game.
The way I see it, if you don't like crafting then it seems you prefer an action-style game. And if you don't like the social interaction the crafting side provides then why not play single player games or NWN persistent worlds? Why should there only be NPC crafters and merchants without NPC adventure-types also attacking monsters and other characters?