I've been thinking of a game that I have really enjoyed recently called Life is Feudal: Your Own and why I like it so much. The fact that players have so many options when it comes to crafting is great as it adds a lot more depth to the system especially when players need to work together to produce a final result.
Furthermore because items can be damaged and destroyed there is always a requirement for crafters to exist meaning that players who decide to spend their time crafting can be assured of always having a purpose in the game.
Anyway here are my thoughts.
https://www.pantheoncrafters.com/resources/complexity-when-crafting.11/
I'd be interested to hear what people think.
Cross-posting my response here too :)
My reply from Pantheon Crafters.
As always I love your ideas .
Let me address them.
1) I kind of saw low level crafting being done via work orders like in Vanguard. You didn't need any materials and you just completed a set of items to make for a vendor and would just grind your way up the levels. It was pretty boring but for leveling up it was much better than having to use (and possibly lose) dropped items that might be hard to come by.
If a player wanted to make a "real" item that is when the complexity comes into play. I sort of see the leveling process being separate from the real business of crafting which is to make items that players actually want and need.
2) Yes. I agree. Each crafting class has to have a reason to exist and, as such, needs to be interesting to play. If you are stuck as a crafting class that just makes subcomponents that is going to get extremely boring, although, having said that, it could extremely profitable as well.
What is needed is, for example, a split. Where crafters have a certain percentage of recipes which are subcomponents and a certain percentage which are finished items. The subcomponents will be used by other crafters and the finished items will require subcomponents from other crafters.
The leveling process will be handled by simple work orders that don't actually produce anything that enters the players economy.
Quality
I agree. I'd like to see low level crafters only being capable of making poor items. Mid level crafters being able to make normal items and high level crafters being able to make exceptional items.
Furthermore if a high level crafter uses a poor subcomponent in an exceptional item then it should knock the quality of the finished item down to normal or maybe even poor in the worst case scenario. In order to make the best item not only should the crafter doing the combine be high level and very skilled but all the subcomponents that they use should be from high level or very skilled crafters to ensure maximum quality of the finished item.
Optional Subcomponents
I loved the dust concept in Vanguard even months after release I was still getting server firsts in combines because I was playing around with all sorts of different dusts in my items to make some unique items that no one had ever made before (at least on my server). This drove my desire to play around with the crafting system and see what all the different combination were to make different items.
Which leads us onto...
Experimentation
I agree that this sort of system really needs to be designed into the game right from the start if it is going to work as it requires a completely different way of thinking about crafting.
Having said that I do hope that there will be some scope for mixing and matching ingredients from different sources in order to make items that no one has made before.
I'd love to feel like I was actually making something special when I was making items. Perhaps I had found a certain combination of items that produce an awesome item and I kept it secret so that people who wanted that item had to come to me in order to get it made. That would make crafters feel really special.
Also as a little aside it would be cool if crafted items had the name of the crafter who made it on them so that people knew who to talk to if they wanted that item in the future.
Cross-posting my response from Pantheoncrafters here too :) (Hint: Crom and I are doing this because we're hoping more people will jump in on these discussions, in either location!)
Cross posting my reply.
I didn't say work orders should be the only way to progress in crafting but as a level one adventurer who just wants to be a crafter you can't go and farm mobs for item drops to use when crafting and you have no way to make any money because you are not yet a crafter. Hence the need for something like work orders where an NPC gives you a list of things to craft and you complete the work order.
I would hope that the act of crafting itself should be fun. I don't want a system where the crafting is the means to an end (which is selling an item to players) I want to enjoy crafting itself.
If I am making a level 1 item I want to enjoy doing it just as much as I enjoy making a level 50 item.
EverQuest crafting sucked because all you did was put items in an a container and hit combine. That is the most boring thing I could imagine. Vanguard was better but I hope Pantheon adds even more complexity to the actual process of crafting.
I think we are at crossed purposes here. You see crafting about being about making an item (and therefore a sale) I see the process of actually making the item (no matter what is) being what crafting is all about. If Pantheon can make the crafting process itself fun that it really doesn't matter what you are making it will always be fun even if it is just a simple work order for an NPC.
Edit: It is pretty obvious that a lot of MMOs have failed in crafting if people don't even consider the process of crafting itself and think that work orders are boring by default. People just assume that the actual process of making an item will be boring because so many MMOs suck at crafting. I really hope Pantheon changes this.
(cross-posted reply)
Croos post reply.
Nephele said:I'm just following along, and I appreciate you guys cross posting I do care quite a bit about crafting, as I always end up sinking a ton of time into it in every game I play, no matter how much I promise not to this time and no matter how terrible that game's crafting system is I really hope that "Stuff Matters(TM)" will apply to crafting and that I am able to enjoy the process of crafting and gathering and that I will be producing mostly useable and/or sellable items/components I like a most of the ideas you guys are discussing, but I've no point of comparison because I've never seen crafting done in a way that made me feel "Hey this is great!" ...so I don't really have a lot to add... please keep at it though!Cross-posting my response from Pantheoncrafters here too :) (Hint: Crom and I are doing this because we're hoping more people will jump in on these discussions, in either location!)
[Edit: Molad - To fix display bug]
lots of vibrating blue squirrels
Edit: somewhere I think something strange happened to my post after posting
copying a reply I think is related
One word on experimentation- that it is intuitive or intuitive as it relates to a bit of lore or rumor that was heard.
Intuitive = Hide+ needle+ thread+ (learned pattern) = something. The learned pattern is not needed for a combine but rather learned through books or exploring. if you learnt more than one wristband, you choose which one you want to use in crafting menu. But Hide + taning agent +thread + needle + (learned pattern) = something else.
Intuitive as it pertains to lore I mean: "he said the blade was tempered with the poison of a snake!" So when you go out, maybe you use that snake poison gland to temper whatever metal you come across- and then when you "get" that (learned to use a temper)- to try tempering with a skunk scent gland!- if THAT combination created something unique, that would be wierd and funny enough to encourage more experimentation and help imbue the crafting"bug". ( like someone said- bunny slippers XD )
Complexity and skill-ups could come in the way of experimentation within one piece of armor. By this I mean: you make rat-skin gloves, you then experiment and make bat fur gloves, snake skin gloves, beetle carapace mittens (*tink-tink*- cant really grab anything, dex is low but look at those resists!). at this level some items cant be used like some hides, but those hides will be tagged with a tradeskill info if you wanted ot save them. Then when you go back to the crafter NPC or trainer, by hailing them they see what you have crafted and then you have the recipes for all armor pieces. if you are able to make 5 different kinds of gloves(mittens) then your sewing kit has a revealed slot.
I'm getting ahead of myself. You have one sewing kit- it has 10 slots- but you can only use 3 at first as the others are greyed out. (hide, needle, thread) then when you have a variety ( maybe 5) differenmt recipes learned, the trainer gives you all the patterns for all armor slots as learned and you can see what benefit they have- (like Snakeskin legs might give a +AG, but snakeskin arms would be +dex and -str or something) INcluding NEW knowledge of a temper or tanning agent ( slot 4 opens up on the sewing kit) You dont know what the temper or tanning agent is, you just know that its out there- again these could be learned or discovered with lore. even finding a piece of strange ore could open up a greyed box, but you would not be able to use it unless you went to the trainer/Crafter NPC.
And I agre with another comment to thisnpost, ifm smithing you could put together a rudimentary mock up - useable- of the weapon but by taking it into town and adding hammer & tongs, and silver or high quality ore would refine the piece further, making it a bit sharper or boposting a small amount of something.
So many excellent points in this thread. I absolutely HATE click crafting. Vanguard, by far, had the best crafting system I ever used. Everquest 2 did have experimentation and was okay, but still much less deep that I wished for.
I loved work orders in Vanguard. Striving to achieve the Yellow bag was so awesome. I could even upgrade my crafting tools sometimes. I think you even found a quest sometimes inside the bag. Now that was excellent. I use work order quests for grinding levels so that I can save my awesome resources that I have found to use when my level is high enough to succeed and not blow things up or destroy quality.
Dusts were awesome too, but very complex and hard to figure out for someone who had never used them before. Once I learned how to add the right dust to cloaks I was making, I made quite a fortune selling mid-level cloaks on my crafter. It was pretty much the only way to get a cloak in game, so it was easy to sell.
I think recipes should be learned as you travel, or as rewards. Not just buy them all or look them up on a wiki. I think your character should physcially have to learn the recipe. Perhaps the recipe is in a work order reward, or you can travel to some far off city to find an old tome/cavern/pile of dirt/treasure map location :)...I know some prefer to craft and not fight, so obviously it would be possible to get the knowledge thru non-combat methods. I love to have a few characters who mostly craft and are not all that strong. I'm not sure if skill points are going to be split between crafting/combat or a shared pool. I've always enjoyed games that make you choose. Sacrifice battle strength to be a great crafter or vice versa.
Gonna post this here because I found it interesting and relevant to this discussion. In the recent MMORPG.com TwitchCon article, Corey talked a little bit about some ideas he has to make crafting more complex:
"It's going to be largely a turn-based experience. You're going to be kinda contending a little bit with yourself. Complications can happen if you're familiar with Vanguard crafting. We have a basic prototype and it's functioning. We are polishing it. We are going to introduce a little bit of a time-based element so that you have limited reaction time for some of the events that happen while you're crafting. Some will be beneficial, some will be negative. Maybe you get a moment of inspiration and you can craft something that much faster or better. Something that isn't just stick your items in a box and hit go. We think we can do better that that. No offence to other games that do that or players who enjoy that experience. We think our target audience wants something a little deeper."