The crafting in EQ2 was nice and enjoyed it alot, Also the crafting aspect in ESO that I like was the ability to earn rare skins that you can craft those armour sets in, and the way you had to travel (in the begining) to craft those sets to certian area's of the game. With that being said I think adding Stats through enchantments or Gem sockets would add more flexiability to those set bonuses. as well as rare mats for some of the sets. and location that are a challenge to get to inorder to craft those sets would Add alot to the game. On a personal note I always thought having Alloy's that need to be discovered by mixing different metal types would add more to the crafting as well and effects of the alloy on that piece of gear. I think having to farm rare mats (in Raid zones and any other zones that may give a percentage for those mats to drop) would be a intresting way of doing it as well. Not looking for overpowered gear, but at same time if certian sets of gear(were the mats have to be farmed and are a challenge to get from drops in zones) were some of the best or better sets of gear to have as well as customizable would add alot content to the game. Also i like the Idea of PvP gear and Pve Gear.
My first thoughts on this topic were 'why bother modeling it after any other game, go for something different'. But if it is too difficult to reinvent the wheel, I would say look at EVE Online crafting, specifically their use of blueprints and research.
A crafting recipe or blueprint could be a physical item, something that you can either purchase from the appropriate merchant (blacksmith, etc), loot from a creature in the wild, or reverse engineer from a dropped item. But it doesn't stop there.
Each recipe/blueprint is a baseline material cost and manufacturing time. A blueprint for a Fine Steel Longsword might have a material cost of 4 Iron Bars, 4 Coal and 3 Oil. If you felt so inclined, you could do some research (some form of training, etc) over a period of time to decrease the material costs. The best you might be able to do is reduce the cost to 2 Iron Bars, 2 Coal, 1 Oil per FS Longsword.
Beyond the materials is manufacturing time. The baseline recipe might need 1 minute to complete but through more research you can reduce the manufacturing time of that recipe to 30 seconds. What you then see, if you went back to that same vendor is your recipe/blueprint is now different from the default obtained by the vendor. You can build that item cheaper and faster than someone else using just the default recipe.
So say you spent a lot of time and effort to get a really efficient blueprint. What now? Why not copy that blueprint and sell it to people? While your original blueprint can be used an infinite number of times, the copies you produce have limited runs available. You could produce a 5 run copy pretty quickly or, given a lot more time, produce a 20 run copy.
That is all fine and good, but what about producing something you can't find off any merchant or dropped by any NPC? Reverse engineering. You see that really cool sword that drops off some named boss and you want to make one like it. Not exactly like it, but close. So you work on reverse engineering it. You take some lengthy steps to learn its construction, its materials, etc and after time (and losing the original in the process) you produce a limited run blueprint of that item. Again, not exactly like the original, but close. You can't do anything further with that recipe other than build off it...but you could sell it.
Shea said:I've said it before will state it again VANGUARD was best crafting system hands down in any game i've played ... ( I have strong dislike for crafting ) says it all :)
Agree with Shea here. There's nothing that would make me happier than to see Vanguard's system taken to the next level. I like the fact that it was both complex and slow to level. That made crafters useful, at times rare, and unique. I detest click-it-and-forget it crafting systems. They are so lazy and boring.
Again, terrible and lazy crafting system...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7juk0p0f1RI
Riveting stuff...
Awesome crafting with detailed processes, crafting interdependency, and difficulty plus harder leveling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSv7LZ-IeK0
Personally, I really liked EQ2 when it first began. You crafted items from resources and then had to use items from other crafters in order to made a final product. Resource -> Basic Supplies -> Finished product
I also liked EQ1 that your character could do all the classes... in EQ2 trading with others was nice but frustrating when other crafters were not available.
I hated crafting in LOTR - never really understood it.
What I really want is a good tutorial system... so its easy to understand how to do crafting in game!!!
I enjoyed Star Wars Galaxies crafting, but more for the gathering part of it than the actual crafting. Stats on gathered ingredients that affected the quality of the final product was great, though I would prefer to see the ingredient stats varying per node and per gather, rather than just changing periodically during server maintenance windows.
Apart from that, some things that I would like to see:
I know this is a VERY difficult thing to balance ...
That said, in EQ I played a rogue and attempted to craft poisons.
The problem was: vast amounts of hard to obtain materials were required to obtain a very temporary minor situalional benefit.
In other words, it just plain wasn't worth the trouble.