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Making Crafting Interesting
laxie
Member RarePosts: 1,123
It's that time of year again. I need advice from the MMORPG community!
I have been working on a multiplayer crafting game. The game should be mainly focused on crafting and selling items. After some previous suggestions, I decided to make items have a variety of stats. I am quite happy with that, as it gives the trading game depth, while still keeping it approachable to new players. For example, certain ores may be more heat resistant than others, passing this property onto a sword that used the ores in crafting. The market then simulates demand for certain attributes, affecting the prices based on stats used. Beginner crafters can still make profits regardless of stats, but expert crafters can choose to play the stat game to make their work sell for more.
While the broader meta-game is quite fun, the actual crafting process is boring. I am realising a game isn't fun if the very core moment-to-moment short term gameplay isn't fun.
Do you have any ideas on how to make the crafting process itself more engaging?
How would you feel about some sort of a mini-game in crafting? I can think of two approaches to this. Either a skill-based task, where you need to press the right buttons at the right time. Perhaps your character swings a hammer and you need to press a button at the perfect time to hit the iron ingot accurately. Or a puzzle-based task, where you need to figure out some sort of a crafting puzzle as part of the process. Perhaps you need to find the right ratio of ingredients that randomly changes each time you craft.
I have been working on a multiplayer crafting game. The game should be mainly focused on crafting and selling items. After some previous suggestions, I decided to make items have a variety of stats. I am quite happy with that, as it gives the trading game depth, while still keeping it approachable to new players. For example, certain ores may be more heat resistant than others, passing this property onto a sword that used the ores in crafting. The market then simulates demand for certain attributes, affecting the prices based on stats used. Beginner crafters can still make profits regardless of stats, but expert crafters can choose to play the stat game to make their work sell for more.
While the broader meta-game is quite fun, the actual crafting process is boring. I am realising a game isn't fun if the very core moment-to-moment short term gameplay isn't fun.
Do you have any ideas on how to make the crafting process itself more engaging?
How would you feel about some sort of a mini-game in crafting? I can think of two approaches to this. Either a skill-based task, where you need to press the right buttons at the right time. Perhaps your character swings a hammer and you need to press a button at the perfect time to hit the iron ingot accurately. Or a puzzle-based task, where you need to figure out some sort of a crafting puzzle as part of the process. Perhaps you need to find the right ratio of ingredients that randomly changes each time you craft.
Comments
Suppose instead that there is an enormous number of rare materials for crafting. Each material is individually rare and impractical to farm. But getting a rare crafting material in the normal course of playing the game is pretty common, and players have plenty of bag space such that a few hours of adventuring leaves them with one or two each of several dozen rare materials. Different rare materials give different stats to their crafted item, some of which are obviously stupid in a sword, others obviously stupid in a shield, and so forth. Now the optimal crafting strategy is to make a wide variety of different items and ponder which materials should go into which items.
If you want the crafting process to be interesting in itself, you need some sort of skill of the player based puzzle that isn't a simple pass/fail but offers a wide variety of outcomes. Thus, newbies can see their skills improve as they learn the puzzle and start of making something that isn't complete garbage. Meanwhile, experts still have to pay attention and do their best rather than it becoming a mind-numbing process of doing just well enough to pass.
If goods can become arbitrarily high quality, make sure that it's not something that everyone needs top quality of or else you end up forcing everyone to buy from one or a few of the most skilled crafters in the game. You don't want a situation where all warriors must buy their sword from player X or forever be inferior. But it's okay if one player tends to make higher quality consumables that are quickly burned through and destroyed than another player. If top quality items give something like faster teleport cooldowns or faster out of combat mounts that are nice to have but don't unbalance combat or whatever your main mechanic is, that's not the same sort of problem.
Another possibility is that you craft commodity items, but better player performance means you get more output. For example, if you're crafting arrows, perhaps a mediocre crafter gets 50 arrows out of an average batch, while an expert often makes over 100 out of the same materials.
You could also take the Puzzle Pirates approach to crafting where your crafting level is based on how well you've done at a given crafting puzzle in the past. But once you've done the puzzle enough to demonstrate that you're good at it, you only need to play once per week to demonstrate that you're still good at it and can use it to craft many items that week.
1. recipes are interesting. what components go into what and in what order, what is a pre-prerequisite build as a component to a more advanced item. where the materials are and how to get them.
2. the actual method of how one hammers a nail or stirs a pot.
say cooking for example, I think most cooks are less interested in how to stir something and more interested in what goes into the pot.
having said that, watching progress bars is not interesting either but that is a method of crafting that is already fallen out of favor in most crafting focused games but clearly not all.
thus I am not interested in mini-games of stiring pots. having said that taking LIF for example I do find making sure the forge is hot enough to be somewhat interesting but as nearly a 100% crafter myself I find it less interesting then complex component tree.
many people who think crafting needs improvement have not played games that are (for the lack of a better word) hyper focused on crafting.
case in point, I actually quit EQ2 as mostly a crafter and went to Darkfall (back in the day) instead because I found the crafting more interesting. I found the ability to have an entire guild commited to building a boat more intresting then tier 2 gloves
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Playing a keyboard game might be fun the first time, but after a while it would likely become tedious, and offer little in long term fun.
For me the key to having fun with crafting is this:
1) The items you craft have to be useful in the game. No one wants to waste time making stuff that nobody wants or needs. It seems obvious but it is still hard to accomplish in a game. This is what did in Voyage Century for me. They had perfectly good crafting and then ruined it with a patch that gave overpowered noob gear that rendered anything crafted useless.
2) Gathering mats is half the fun. Or at least it should be. Many might disagree with me here, but crafting should be like a scavenger hunt. When you craft a highly useful item you should be able to look at it and feel good about what you had to go through to create it. Just saying chop 50 trees and mine 150 ores doesn't cut it. Good crafting items need to be harder and rarer to access. Some type of battle or search that may even require assistance should be required.
3) Crafting should take time. Again people might disagree here. But if all you to do is buy some mats, toss em in the crafter, press a button and Voila!, then you really have no challenge. Something small or frequently used should be take relatively small amounts of time. But to craft something truly special should take a week or more. If it doesn't then people can simply crank rare or powerful stuff out and that takes the uniqueness and the satisfaction out of creating it.
4) Recipes, like Sean said, are key, because crafting is like cooking. It is the ingredients and the methods to make the best item possible or a good item better, that provides the fun. A little complexity and choice goes a long way to adding fun here, as long as you don't overcomplicate to the point of absurdity. Looking at you REPOPULATION. Make it like a good quest should be where you have multiple options to complete an objective and you have to decide what is best.
These are my general guidelines as to what makes crafting interesting and fun for everyone, including the people who don't like to craft. Crafting should be all about supply and demand. The crafter needs people who need their stuff. And people who need their stuff, need crafters and should be willing to help them to get the things they want.
And the final key to good crafting in a game:
5) All the weapons, armor, potions, and whatever should be crafted. No loot drops whatsoever. This is the hardest for people to take, but if all you need to do is kill some badass monster to get the most powerful sword or armor in the game, then you have completely negated the entire crafting process. A person should need the best crafted item in order to kill the badass monster, otherwise where is the demand and what is the purpose of crafting in a game?
Probably not the answer you were looking for, but as far as the process itself, a clean interface and intuitive process is really what you want. I don't think adding a "skill" factor in the way of dexterity or puzzle solving or things of that nature is really necessary. I think having to do crafting in a specific area or with specific tools being required is a good idea. Perhaps being able to build your workshop and upgrade it would be interesting.
My final thought is that the best MMO is one that integrates crafting into all levels of gameplay. I would even place crafting above combat in importance to an MMO. Not important in terms of fun, but important in terms of pulling together all elements of what makes an MMO fun, for the majority of players.
So I wish you the best of luck with your project.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
For me, the holy grail of crafting systems is Wurm Online's crafting system, done with materials being as important as they are in Mortal Online, in the style of the above video.
Crafting in real life is indeed based on two things - the recipe, then the process itself.
Whilst Sean says the process itself is boring and nobody wants to gamify stiring a pot, I think that is where he utterly wrong (I've had this argument with him before and he won't budge).
The recipe is all about knowledge. What goes into a recipe is indeed interesting and it can be exciting to unlock a new recipe, or figure out which special ingredients will make a sword hit harder. But, this is pure knowledge - there is no player skill involved. The first people figuring out the system might need to use some skill deducing which ingredients have which effects, but for the majority of people they will just make what is obvious and then lookup recipes if they want to craft something special.
The process is where the skill lies. For some reason, Sean can't understand this point of view but that's fine, we're all entitled to our own views. Think of it like frying a steak - two people can have identical steaks, the same amount of oil and seasoning and the same frying pans, but chances are the steaks will come out differently depending on the skill level of the user.
So, whilst in real life, the process itself might be boring (hammering a nail, painting a wall, cooking a steak etc), it is the process that shows off the persons skill. Your challenge as a developer is to turn that boring process into some sort of gameplay that is engaging and allows player skill to show.
Sadly, I don't have any examples for you as I've never played a game with interesting crafting - the crafting part has always been boring so I've only ever engaged with it in order to get the end result: the crafted items.
I can only provide examples from combat systems that I have found interesting and allowed player skill to shine.
1) Best Case Scenario
The crafting process should have a predictable best case scenario. You start crafting, press the right buttons at the right time and you produce the best possible item. This is again knowledge-based and wouldn't require much to figure out. This is the equivalent of learning a combat rotation.
2) Input Variables
Just like in combat, you don't enter each situation in the same state. Maybe you don't have a tank. Maybe your DPS sucks. Maybe you're chain pulling and you're all at half health. The starting point of combat can have a big effect on the combat process so you should aim for something similar in crafting. This might mean adjusting the process based on the ingredients. It may mean requiring the player to setup their crafting environment differently (e.g. overheating the forge in order to be able to smelt adamantium?). What this does is prevent a single process being viable for all crafting - crafters will have to adapt to each item they are crafting (still mostly knowledge based, but starting to allow player skill to show).
3) Scripted Events
Lots of combat has scripted events. Hit 50% HP and boss uses ability etc. You can get some of these into your crafting process, e.g. when forging a sword, if sword temperature drops below 150c whilst hammering then each subsequent hammerblow weakens it. I'm not much of a fan of this type of thing as again, not really showing player skill, more player knowledge, but it is adding more complexity which means less people will be able to learn / remember it all.
4) RNG / Meaningful Choices
I'll probably get a lot of hate for this, but add some RNG to crafting. What is key is that the player has the ability to react to the RNG. For example, in combat enemies will often score a crit hit on you. This forces a choice on the player: continue as normal, try to heal, or use defensive skills. The RNG has forced the player to react and the way that they react is how they show off their skill.
I'm not really too sure how you get this into your system. Something like when shaping a blade you may be required to beat it at the base, middle and end for 100 power, but when you hit the end you "crit" beat it, causing the end to be too thin and the middle too fat. The player then has the choice to continue (do nothing - lowered durability), beat the middle (hoping to even it out again), return to the forge (increasing time taken to craft) or scrap it. Thats not a very good example as it doesn't really show off player skill, but hopefully you can see what I'm aiming for: RNG -> forced choice -> choice has meaningful impact
5) Twitch Skill
Whilst I don't enjoy action combat, a lot of people do. Perhaps you could incorporate some sort of manual aiming / movement into your crafting? E.g. manually aiming the hammer / nail in order to get the best angle and power (thereby increasing strength / dura?), or manually stirring a pot (better stirring = better mixing of ingredients = more potent?).
1. Is the cook interested in how to stir the pot or he is more interested in the recipes.
2. is the home builder more interested in how to hammer or is he more interested materials, cost, design etc.
3. Is the drug dealer more fascinated by how to get the powder from his spoon to the scale or he is more interested in the weight.
anything post that is not related directly to my examples I will not read. Far to often responses to me get waay off track and miss the point
WITH THAT SAID: Take a look at House Flippers and My Summer Car.
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If games like that can exist, there's no reason a smaller version of them can't exist in a larger MMO world.
Games like Planet Explorers have what an MMO needs, for its crafting - the ability to make each, individual piece of equipment look substantially different, and having that look affect the stats. You're not just looking at a progress bar while you make 1,000 knives. Instead, you're adding shapes, re-positioning blocks and creating the recipe used to make the item.
Add some skill points to that system and you can start increasing the types of weapons, armors and materials players can use.
If it's get one recipe and then use it to make 100 of item X, that's going to get boring awfully quick. If recipes can be arbitrary combinations of things that give different stats, then you're closer to what I proposed in my first post above. If you do a Tree of Savior like system where a recipe can only be used to craft an item once, then crafting really just becomes an alternate way of dropping loot from combat, not really a major activity in itself.
So both are equally important.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.
But I do agree, it is more true to the real aspect of the craft. Did the game make the process of gathering materials just as deep? Such as mining and the like. I laugh how minerals are usually mined at rocks out in the real world when in most cases they are found deep within a mine... something which has to be built first I might add.
In the games I play 'one recipe and then use it to make 100 of items X' is NOT THE STORY!!!!!!!
if you have to make 100 items its because the NAVY SHIP you are building requires 100 wood, or the house you are building requires 100 stone. Or because the 100 bricks required to build an oven to cook meals in, requires 100 clay and 100 sand in order to make.
you NEVER make 100 items just to make 100 items, it almost always leads to a 1 count or something you are going to need to stay alive
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If MMO combat happened in one room, it would probably be incredibly boring. I think the fact that combat often happens across the whole zone (or a dungeon) helps a lot with making a relatively simple system feel fresh.
Then again, I'm not sure this would make sense for crafting. Just a random thought.
if you change my crafting engine into a skill of timing and running around the world hoping to hit the right button at the right time then people who actually enjoy crafting as it is in high end crafting games they will stop and someone will eventually make a game that is back the way it was to begin with.
Crafting doesnt need to be fixed, people who are not the personality type to enjoy it as it is really should not do it in the first place.
question is...why do you want to craft anyway?
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People rarely seem to pursue crafting for the actual crafting process itself. The actual process (between you putting ingredients in and getting outcome item out) is usually not that interesting.
Now, I would argue that in most MMOs, this is fine. You have the combat aspect of the game, which lets people pursue the skill based elements if they enjoy that. My game has no combat at all - there are social features, trading and crafting.
I was hoping to make crafting interesting enough to substitute combat in a way. People who then prefer faster paced (or skill based) gameplay could still find that in the various crafting disciplines. And those who enjoy crafting in traditional MMOs would still have that through the various systems surrounding crafting (such as owning/managing shops, trading ingredients, etc.)
The other part that you are describing you enjoy is what crafters enjoy as well. it is in effect crafting. The reason they put in progress bars instead of twitch skills on a hammer is because people dont want to do that.
Now, if you want some experimentation on how that assessment might be wrong check out My Summer Car.
but I think in the end you are trying to 1. solve a problem that doesnt exist 2. make something intresting that nobody is intrested in making intresting in the first place
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1. The cook is interested in the end result (a good stew). They get there by selecting the ingredients for the recipe (knowledge) and then doing the cooking (skill).
2. The home builder is interested in the end result (a good home). He gets there by employing an architect, buying materials etc (knowledge) and then having his specialist labourers actually build the thing (skill).
3. Not worth dignifying with an answer.
If you focus on only one part of the equation - the recipe - then you are ignoring a huge area of crafting and the only place where player skill can be shown. Recipes can be incredibly complex, like building a spaceship in Kerbal Space Program, but ultimately someone can just look online to learn the recipe and bypass any skill required in understanding the recipe.
So, if you want to create a really engaging crafting system that allows player skill to shine, you have to gamify the actual crafting process.
The EQ2 approach to crafting is trying to make how one hammers a nail the most compelling aspect of building a house.
its not.
Even in My Summer Car the intresting part is not how to get your mouse on the screw and how to twist it. the intresting part is how many screws, where are they, how does the part go in, how much did this thing cost me, is it ready for pick up, how will it improve my car.
That said, in tuning the car you do have to turn the screw a specific direction a specfic number of times. Maybe you consider that fun, I think most would not.
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But even if what you're doing is building a navy ship by building 100 of item X, that can still get boring. One hopes for more variety in building that navy ship than just doing some simple thing a huge number of times. If you need to craft 30 different things to build that navy ship, and crafting each of those items is substantially different from crafting any other, then you're onto something.
This is much like saying that for a game to have good combat, it has to have a lot of combat content. If a game were to consist entirely of combat and every single battle in the entire game was pretty much identical to every other, that's not a good game. What that single battle consists of barely even matters, as the problem is that it gets so repetitive. If the only differences between mobs are that they look different and that higher level mobs have more health and deal more damage, there's no variety there.
In combat, games have long since figured out that you have to offer a lot of variety. Different mobs move in different ways, use different attacks, and have different weaknesses. You can have to fight different numbers of mobs at a time, requiring different tactics, and so forth. Having a lot of variety is not sufficient for a good combat system, but it is necessary.
And the same is true of crafting. What I liked about A Tale in the Desert's crafting was not so much that this or that crafting puzzle was great, but that there were so many of them. Crafting boards was not the same as crafting charcoal, glass rods, or wine glasses. Nor were any of those the same as mining for ore or digging for gypsum.
But that also means that if you're going to have a good crafting system, you can't do it on the cheap by having just one crafting process and copy/pasting it a bunch of times. Just like a good theme park needs as least hundreds if not thousands of quests and a lot of variety among them, a good crafting system needs a lot of substantially different things to do.