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All About Crafting with Mark Jacobs
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
All About Crafting with Mark Jacobs
Today, the folks behind Camelot Unchained at CityState Entertainment unveiled their master plan for crafting in their upcoming MMORPG. Ahead of that, Mark Jacobs was kind enough to share said plan with MMORPG.com, and we went right back at him with over a dozen questions about the systems therein. Read on for all of MJ’s thoughts!
Comments
You stay sassy!
It is just too much work and you can really see when small teams have to do it it looks sort of like not good enough.I was watching a bit of that VOD and yeah it looks like perhaps for assets they should have aimed at using some freeware stuff,especially for trees and stuff.
I simply cannot get into pvp or rvr in a rpg,it does nothing for me.RVR would need to be 20 or 30++ realms before it carried any meaning to me.
Auction houses,to me that is an automatic include that needs to be there.I thought it complete nonsense the way Asian games had those stalls because unlike real life you can't see what they are selling until you actually go around clicking 100+stalls...no thanks.The ONLY reason FFXIV tried to leave it out was they were going big time cheap on that game because it was taking too long,costing them too much money.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
There is a reason why genre has moved on from ideas presented in the interview...they simply do not work.
"There's method in somebody's madness"
There is a reason why genre has moved on from ideas presented in the interview...they simply do not work.
Care to elaborate on what ideas that don't & that the genre has moved away from were presented in the interview? There have been a lot of unsuccessful games in the genre lately and really not all that many truly successful ones.
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2025: 48 years on the Net.
DAOC had decent crafting, until ToA came out and ruined it. First rule is: crafters make the best stuff. No drops can equal what crafters make. If you don't do this, then forget crafting.
I understand what you're saying, but the items required to craft said items need to come from top-end drops. You want to craft that Red Dragon Shield? Great, go kill a few red dragons and get the scales, then craft it. There needs to be incentive on both sides.
Nanulak
Just to remind you that the stream is still on, and with some luck we will see live gameplay in couple minutes (currently, Max is reading Frost Giants lore while CSE tries to talk more alpha/IT testers into logging in).Edit: It's over, was fun and for what it's worth here is Vellic's summary (with Q&A part to be added bit later, I guess!?), Massively OP's stream announcement and crafting interview with Mark, together with the new crafting document.
olepi said:
DAOC had decent crafting, until ToA came out and ruined it. First rule is: crafters make the best stuff. No drops can equal what crafters make. If you don't do this, then forget crafting.
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I understand what you're saying, but the items required to craft said items need to come from top-end drops. You want to craft that Red Dragon Shield? Great, go kill a few red dragons and get the scales, then craft it. There needs to be incentive on both sides.
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Totally agree. Nothing should drop any finished anything, only mats to make things. Like in Ryzom, no weapons or armor ever drops from anything. Weak generic items can be purchased from NPC's, but anything worth anything is made by a crafter.
They ruined DAOC crafting, let's see if they learned anything.
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2025: 48 years on the Net.
21 year MMO veteran
PvP Raid Leader
Lover of The Witcher & CD Projekt Red
Like I have said all these games where you get the best crafting from the hardest areas all sound cool until theyre implemented. Then they fall flat, fail and/or are changed.
Until someone makes a game and implements a crafting system where the finished product is worth more than the sum of the parts crafting is still going to be fail in MMOs. That is nearly impossible to do with an 'open' market because prices are set by players, and most of the time the prices are stupid.
The 'simplest' solution to this is have all those rare (and expensive) drops be usable only by a mastercraft tier crafter. Meaning only a very small segment can even make the item. That way the 'value' of the items isnt lost and the CRAFTER, not the supplier sets the price for the hard to make item. In most game a lot of people can get the item but even more people can use it. It dilutes its 'value'. But if a small number of people can get something, and an even smaller number can make it that makes the finished products 'value' more realistic. And like I said lets the crafter (the true creator) of the item sett he price based on what he wants not trying to eek out a tiny profit (if he can even do that) after he weighs the prices of the items it takes to make the finished product versus what he can realistically expect to get for it.
Now that may touch on economy as well but crafting and economy go hand in hand, and no MMO in the past decade has made it where CRAFTING was the best way to make money. It has been the SUPPLIERS who are the ones making the money, and that is just backwards.
Games based on those ideas and models are being considered "old-school" and are dead by now, for a reason.
Yet, we can see a handful of sentimental indie devs who now and then think it will for some reason work - most successful examples being Mortal Online and Darkfall.... That is where the game is heading....
But seeing your comment on recent "unsuccessful" releases and no "truly" successful, I think this discussion will lead nowhere...
Games based on those ideas and models are being considered "old-school" and are dead by now, for a reason.
Yet, we can see a handful of sentimental indie devs who now and then think it will for some reason work - most successful examples being Mortal Online and Darkfall.... That is where the game is heading....
But seeing your comment on recent "unsuccessful" releases and no "truly" successful, I think this discussion will lead nowhere...
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The two examples you used are ffa, full loot, pvp games, as opposed to an rvr game with a focus on realm pride. There's a bit of a difference. We'll see how it all works out of course, but I'm looking forward to it.
Crafters will be able to get started on day one, make gear for combatants, hopefully start a social network right there.
As opposed to crafters stepping a single toe out of their starter city on day one and getting muckled (and looted) by 15 or so high end characters with nothing better to do in the game but kill fresh noobs, because that's part of the proceeds of a "hardcore" game.
Whether there are safe zones or not is just minor difference, the push for crafters into PVP is present in both cases and it never works.
I do not follow the game very closely but there are some fundamental issues with crafting that weren't addressed in this QA - ie. most importantly how they want to tackle crafting vs gear progression issue since those two makes it incredibly difficult to work out together, especially if you want to avoid "creating 1000s of useless items" and I haven't seen any solid concept layout for crafting role in the game.
Do not take me wrong, it is nothing personal nor my bias, what I am just wondering where is a business sense in all that - trying to re-create a business that already died? It truly seems to me the game is being made out of sentiment rather than thinking about their customers - players. Similarly as is refusal of auction house which means they are shooting crafters in the foot big times, again I guess the decision is purely sentimental.
Marcus- said:
The two examples you used are ffa, full loot, pvp games, as opposed to an rvr game with a focus on realm pride. There's a bit of a difference. We'll see how it all works out of course, but I'm looking forward to it.
Crafters will be able to get started on day one, make gear for combatants, hopefully start a social network right there.
As opposed to crafters stepping a single toe out of their starter city on day one and getting muckled (and looted) by 15 or so high end characters with nothing better to do in the game but kill fresh noobs, because that's part of the proceeds of a "hardcore" game.
FFA nor full loot is a problem, the detrimental factor is open world PVP. OPvP = ganking, people do not like that much and prefer instanced, structured PVP where they have a "fair" chance.
Whether there are safe zones or not is just minor difference, the push for crafters into PVP is present in both cases and it never works.
I do not follow the game very closely but there are some fundamental issues with crafting that weren't addressed in this QA - ie. most importantly how they want to tackle crafting vs gear progression issue since those two makes it incredibly difficult to work out together, especially if you want to avoid "creating 1000s of useless items" and I haven't seen any solid concept layout for crafting role in the game.
Do not take me wrong, it is nothing personal nor my bias, what I am just wondering where is a business sense in all that - trying to re-create a business that already died? It truly seems to me the game is being made out of sentiment rather than thinking about their customers - players. Similarly as is refusal of auction house which means they are shooting crafters in the foot big times, again I guess the decision is purely sentimental.
First of all, this is a niche game. They are not going for the normal, 2 realm, mirrored classes with a rush towards clearing content to get the uber gear drops. That is obviously what you want. Which is fine btw.
And a lot of folks are truely naive about the no auction house statement. If it will be anything like DAoC, then yes, there will be no auction house. However, crafters and gatherers will have a very viable option to sell their goods. If they want it, they buy it. No auction. Pretty simple really.
Saying the game is being made without thinking about their customers is....to be blunt, about the dumbest thing that could be said about this game. Sorry you are not part of the niche. Peace.
Do you know what very niche games are called? Closed games.
EDIT: God this site has the worst commenting system...