Crafting

[Sinistralis]

This is going to be more for Citan than anyone else. Given the nature of the skill system I had a question.

I am a gigantic fan of EQ2's crafting. I have yet to find another game that made crafting as awesome and fun as it was in EQ2. I was curious if you had any plans to implement something similar. If not, is there any reason why? I'm surprised the archaic "click and watch bar" or "click and receive item" systems still exist, honestly, after EQ2.

 

[Citan]

Yeah, I liked them too, but yeah I do have a reason why I didn't use that system. It comes down to something Sandra related from Scott Hartsman, the long-time head of EQ2. (She worked for him for a year on EQ2 expansions.) In a nutshell, he said that EQ2's crafting didn't do enough to fill more gameplay niches. Because it's time-based, and requires attention, it ends up feeling like combat -- but not particularly compelling combat, more like quick-time events -- which is admittedly more fun than no interactions at all, if all you're doing is crafting...

But crafting is a downtime activity for a lot of players -- something you do while chatting and watching TV. And EQ2's crafting is a bit too intense to allow easy chatting while doing it. People who want to chat and socialize prefer crafting systems without quick-time events. And the quicktime events aren't fun enough to overcome that loss.

I disagreed with this assessment until I went back and played EQ2 a while back. But now I think he's right. I had fond memories of the system, but it's not nearly as compelling as the combat, so I still only did it during down time. And it did suck that I couldn't chat to my guild very well while I did so.

So I've been thinking about new crafting systems that aren't reflex- or timing-based. The surveying skill is one such. It's designed with the ability to be social in mind. Surveying gets more efficient if you work together with other players (for instance, you can divvy up the world into quadrants, so each player collects maps for a given quadrant), but doesn't require socialization. In that way, it works kind of like group combat: it's more efficient, but not something you'd do all the time. Which is an interesting thing to have in an MMO. I always resented crafting systems that force you to rely on other crafters for key components, because that felt like "forced grouping." But I don't always want "forced soloing" while crafting, either.

I'll probably tune some other crafting systems, like gardening, to be a little more social-friendly. And I have some other ideas, including some cribbed from SWG's crafting system, to try out. I'd like to get a little bit of thinking and planning into crafting, but I don't want it to have a time-restriction component; that's what combat is for.

 

[Sinistralis]

This is a really interesting view into this subject. I have to admit, I don't use crafting for downtime so I might be in the minority on that subject. I usually use downtime for theorycrafting. It's pitfalls like this that make me always check for other opinions on the subject.

Looking back, actually... after all the work to find an item, it was a little annoying to have to go through another entire process.

 

[Gurog Lackey]

I also loved EQ2's crafting. But on another note I also loved DAoC's crafting which is the opposite of EQ2's really. I like in DAoC that you could buy 98% of the resources from NPC's to craft. No need to compete with others for resources , and the crazy inflation that comes from players selling them. That combined with some UI mods that allowed to have a video screen within the game to watch your favorite movie while you craft. It was long and tedious but the rewards of the crafted gear was nice.

 

[ZibanZiban]

I'll probably tune some other crafting systems, like gardening, to be a little more social-friendly. And I have some other ideas, including some cribbed from SWG's crafting system, to try out. I'd like to get a little bit of thinking and planning into crafting, but I don't want it to have a time-restriction component; that's what combat is for.

Things I'd think long and hard about would be

1. Have one-use recepies and one-use materials drop from boss fights

2. Primarily give crafters crafting XP when their items are used, not when they are made - dont make them make 2000 swords to become the Uber-Smith, make them make the one sword that was used to kill the dragon.

3. Legendary items should be made at specific times, at specific places, against opposition.

4. Item decay is good. Swords break, even shiny magic ones like Excalibur. And then you have a sperate process for reforging them.

5. Make sure there is still a niche for new crafters - one of the problems pre-CU had was that everything a newbie crafter could make was already in factory production by other people with better resources

6. Interdependance is good, but if you dont have the market set up to support it, then players will either grind alts (removing the purpose of interdependance)or get frustrated and stop.

7. Every craft should have a mix of consumables and permanent items.

8. The person who made something should have their name on it. Do what it takes at the back end to enable this.

9. Have crafting materials drop from normal mobs.