I think crafting is really important even though I'm not a huge crafter myself. I especially like it when crafting is mixed with other aspects of the game like having a forge in the depths of a dungeon that you need to fight your way too, to be able to use it to forge special bars of metal that allow you to make special armour and weapons.
I am a fan of player crafting being the core nexus of a games item economy, especially in an open world game environment where almost all items are tradeable. In an open world all players are fighting over access to the same resources. This is especially true for items. The more powerful the item is the rarer the item needs to be maintain any risk vs reward scale so few players will have access to the best items at first.
Over time the mobs that drop the best in slot items for each class will become the only mobs that are truly competed for and the rest become speed bumps. Additionally as best in slot items are received the 2nd best in slot items reenter the economy and begin to trickle down. This trickle down effect begins to water down the value of lower tier drops. Eventually only the top two tiers or so have any real value and the rest become vendor food. You end up with situations where cloaks of flame and fungi tunics become the only real currency that maters and everything else is a function of them.
If instead of a monster drop focused item economy you have a player crafted focused item economy then the focus shifts from the BiS dropping mobs to the ingredient sources for best in slot recipes. While this sounds the same it becomes much easier to spread out the sources across various methods including challenging repeatable quest rewards, harvesting rare finds, bulk salvaging (which can greatly raise the value of trash mobs) and finally from rare spawns and boss mobs. The rare and boss mobs should still drop desirable items but with the very rare exception they should still be improvable through player crafting.
The second half to a player crafted item economy really working is item decay. If items do not leave the economy, through various means, at almost the same rate they enter the economy then you will end up with an extreme surplus of goods stockpiled. Stockpiling items will once again tank the game economy and spiral inflation out of control on the few desired items.
Having a player created item economy rather than a monster drop item economy also increases the amount of interaction required between players. Even if you spend weeks farming your goal you will still need to find a crafter capable of making your item before you are done rather than just being done when your target shows up in the loot window. If players are also limited to only one crafting class with each class having an interdependence with at least half the other crafting classes you also drive player interactions as crafters need to work together to further their own craft. I would go so far as to possibly make the harvesting skills their own crafting classes to even further create an interdependent system.
Kilsin said:Crafting - How much do you like crafting in MMORPGs, is crafting something you expect to be in-game and how important do you think it is for the game even if you don't craft? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters
1- very much
2- yes, I expect it to be in game
3- very important.
I haven't crafted a lot in MMO's.
I'd almost rather it be easier to craft but the items be not as good. At least I could get sometime usable for my efforts. Say if I want to just fill in a slot that I am missing something.
If I had any feedback about crafting that I think everyone would agree with, it's that I would like to see crafting benefit every class. I don't want to only craft armor only if I am a melee character. There's got to be a way to make crafted armor beneficial even to casters.
I expect crafting to be in any serious MMO, but not necessarily in any significant way. In fact, more often than not, crafting seems like the devs added it in as an afterthought. It's rarly implemented in such a way that makes it more meaningful and worthwhile than adventuring. So if the devs don't take it seriously, I don't feel the need to either. But so far Pantheon is being designed in such a way where I'm actually feel legitimately interested in crafting for the first time. Even if I don't spend the majority of my time crafting, I think it is an integral aspect of the game and everyone should at least understand how it works. So much so, in fact, that I couldn't resist the opportunity to interview VR's crafting dev: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/8044/exclusive-interview-with-vr-s-corey-quot-ceythos-quot-le-fever
I'm a crafternut. Crafting should very much be included in the game. I try out every trade and turn over every stone that has something to do with crafting.
"and how important do you think it is for the game even if you don't craft?"
To that part, I'ld say: If you don't craft yourself you either rely heavely on other players or on ingame loot. If one would leave out crafting, I see a game just having that narrowminded end game view. Where the best loot of the most recent boss will save the day and everything below becomes redundant over night. This could encourage elitism and grinds with in the end the collapse of a player driven economy and exponential rise of loot prices.
So for me, crafting is the wheel and driving heart of a game. Even if you don't craft yourself, it will influence, direct or define your gaming experience and playstyle.
Aside of that, when a game has been launched for a while and a newby enters the game, the crafting system might offer a hand and a way in for those players that do not have the resources yet to overcome the obstacles of further advanced content. It could stimulate interplayer communication and futher exploration of the community side of a game (be that adventuring or tradeskill). It is a tool to encourage and facilitate contact between players in the game. And for this kind of game, that is a very good thing, if not the most important desire.
I love crafting. I expect it to be in game. Based on other MMOs, including Everquest, I have found crafting to be a very important aspect of the game.
Star Wars Galaxies was the best at crafting (no two crafted items were the same, each had unique stats, you could always try for better), so if you can come anywhere close to it, your on the right track.
Hopefully you will have a very large variety of inputs (different types of spiders drop different kinds of silk, with each type of silk providing different positive and negative attributes to a final product)
That are acquired in a variety of ways (slaying mobs, harvesting, foraging, fishing)
Quality of inputs influence the quality of the output (with skills, recipes, character stats, and gear all having an influence as well)
Lots of highly desirable and consumable items that keep customers coming back for more (Arrows, potions, poisons, food, drink, ect...)
And finally a well designed in-game economy where currency maintains its value, resources are scarce, and where time and effort invested into a particular craft, provide some tangible moats that others cannot easily infringe upon without themselves also putting in a comparable amount of effort.
Disclosure: Nephele helps administer Pantheon Crafters - so, that should give you a clue right there how he feels :)
Crafting is super important to me because it helps drive social interaction that's not focused around content. The content might be the shared need that gets a community going, but crafting and social systems are the glue that keeps that community together. The idea that players can help each other indirectly - that someone can enable another player to defeat a boss, finish a quest, or accomplish a goal without having to be grouped with them or online even at the same time - that's a powerful thing.
Crafting adds realism and immersion to the game world when it's implemented properly. Instead of a world where everyone just runs around and thwacks monsters all day long, which somehow magically have all the shiny gear we want, crafting helps give the impression that all that shiny gear actually came from somewhere. That it was made by someone - and that maybe, YOU could make something that awesome at some point too.
Crafting can drive a game economy when implemented well. It can enable newer players with ways to earn money in game, and redistribute wealth so that more players have the buying power to purchase interesting things, instead of just those with the most time to go farm whatever activities generate cash. The better implemented a crafting system is, the more money moves around in the in-game economy, with everyone needing something that someone else can provide.
There have been games that implemented crafting well, but it's not easy. Neph's definition of implemented well:
- Crafting needs to be fun and engaging to participate in, not just mindless clicking.
- Crafting needs to be accessible to new players, and not require them to be very advanced or very rich to get started
- Crafting needs to have depth, so that there's always more to discover and create for players
- Crafting needs to promote interdependence. One person should not be able to do everything themselves.
- Crafted items need to be viable, whether that's at level 1 or level 50. An item no one wants to buy or use, because there are better alternatives, is a wasted item.
- Progressing crafting needs to be more than meaningless grinding or making worthless widgets for faceless NPCs. Crafters should feel like they're doing something that makes a difference in the world.
- Crafting shouldn't require someone to be an adventurer, but the crafter who adventures should find more opportunities.
- Crafters should need adventurers, not just to purchase created items, but in order to obtain needed resources and materials as well.
If you want to read something really old (and not written by me) that helps outline a lot of how I feel about crafting, I recommend this and this.
And of course, everyone should totally feel free to come talk more about crafting in our roundtable discussions on Pantheon Crafters :)
My only opinion is please don't allow crafting to boost your character stats in some way. I don't want to be forced to craft myself in order to min / max my character; I've never enjoyed crafting and it annoyed me when I had to do it in WoW for min/max reasons.
It should just be purely for creating/selling items in my opinion.
Crafting has always been an important aspect to my MMO gaming.
MMO's have reduced crafting to non-essential skill.
A crafters dream is to useful, needed and wanted at end game.
We crafters have put our hope and faith in Pantheon to make crafting just as important as adventuring.
1. Can't stand it. Crafting is for the birds. There's "nothing worse" than killing some mob in a fun tough encounter and having it drop crafting components or recipes.
2. Of course.
3. It's important, if only because other people love it so much. It's also good for the game to take people out of "killing things" content and divert them into crafting.
My primary experience crafting was in classic EQ and I did some in Luclin. I was never a huge fan of crafting personally because my play time was always limited and I preferred to be out doing battle. Having said that, there was a sense of satisfaction when I did do crafting and was able to make some much needed items for myself and for my guild. I did jewel crafting on my enchanter and some baking and blacksmith skills on my monk. I always viewed it as downtime or what I call "administrative tasks" which involved hitting the town to train, get provisions, sell stuff, etc. The jewel crafting was obviously for stat increasing items, needed for raiding and later for twinking my alts. The baking was mainly for fun to have something different in my inventory for food but also the meals could last longer. Blacksmithing was for javelins, much needed for long range pulls on my monk. I was also never a fan of the auction environment. If there was a means of setting up a storefront and selling through that, I'd be much more inclined to pursue crafting and also resource gathering / harvesting. Again, with limited time to play, I don't want to spend it standing around auctioning.
In Pantheon, I should have more play time and I would be interested in tinkering some more with crafting. Also, I anticipate that the crafting system will be much improved over the old days of crafting. I do expect crafting to be in the game. It's an important means of consuming materials and money to help maintain a healthy economy. It can also be a fun diversion when you don't have enough time to join a group but can spend some time gathering resources and/or working on crafting skills. At this point, I consider crafting to be an important part of any MMO. It helps keep players engaged in the world and makes playing in that world more than just fighting creatures.
Crafting is probably one of the most important functions in an MMORPG, it creates a community, either by buying from the tradeskillers or the tradeskillers buying goods from you. literally the one thing that keeps the community in contact with themselves, i'd say with their was an MMORPG that didnt have tradeskilling in it would probably be just as devastating as saying theirs a MMORPG out their but you cant group up with anyone. but this is just my opinion.
I'll simply agree with what Nephele said.
Crafting is *very* important to me and I always do it. It needs to be useful and not just at level-cap.
Vanguard had a wonderful system - if Pantheon doesn't improve a thing and just replicates it this will be very good. But I hope there are improvements. If crafters can make houses please let's have *better* houses the ones in Vanguard werem't nearly as good as the boats one could craft.
One thing that I feel strongly about that hasn't been much mentioned - harvesting is a very important part of crafting. Again, Vanguard had a wonderful system complete with special harvesting gear, group harvesting and rare nodes. I loved the idea of somethimes getting some unusual material from a node it was a great incentive to spend days doing nothing but harvesting. So-called ultra-rares too but IMO in Vanguard they weren't rare enough.
Just don't ask me for the location of the high level harvesting cave - I promised that if I told anyone where it was I would kill them. ((yes I know it was eventually nerfed by filling it with rather nasty mobs))
I liked crafting in the older MMOs, but not so much since WoW and beyond.
I really don't mind tedious, grindy, time-consuming, PITA crafting. In fact, I prefer it because it keeps a lot of other people from doing it. And when fewer people want to tackle the mountain that is crafting, the more valuable and rewarding (and therefore, imo, fun) it is to partake. When everyone is constantly harvesting everything, and every single person has a craft maxed out because it's so easy to keep maxed while leveling... it really loses its appeal to me. Nobody really needs you, and there's not much benefit to crafting for others because most people can either do it themselves or get it done at cost. Or just farm the materials themselves (rather easily) then have a friend do it.
It just boils down to people's playstyle and what the majority of people want. If you don't like crafting but you want easy access to one of the crafts, then you'll definitely want it to be as simple and streamlined as possible. If you play for maybe an hour or so a day, you'll probably want crafting to be something you can do rather quickly and effortlessly so that you can spend more time out and about with friends in dungeons or what not.
Another way to look at it is how good will crafted stuff be? If it's something TONS of people are doing because it's simple and quick, crafted stuff probably isn't going to be very good and therefore hardly worth the time anyway. If it's a huge PITA and requires a lot of time and effort, and fewer people are doing it, the stuff can be of a much higher quality, more potent, more desirable, etc...
Oh, another thing I HATE in more recent MMOs is every stupid thing dropping a million different crafting items so that your bank is full by the time you're level 20. It's ridiculous. My bags shouldn't be full of crafting junk after hunting for 20 minutes.
Anyhoo.... I imagine I'm in the minority here, but if Pantheon tries to make crafting appealing to everyone, it probably won't appeal to me.
Kilsin said:Crafting - How much do you like crafting in MMORPGs, is crafting something you expect to be in-game and how important do you think it is for the game even if you don't craft? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters
Between a score 1-10 I give crafting a 6. Yes, I have come to expect it. It seems like a nice thing in some games almost a mini game but also a time sink. I will typically only craft if its important to the characters themselves. If not I'll grind plat and buy the items.
Will dungeons and mobs provide the best gear or does crafting? Will all classes need a crafting ability to make something vital to that class? like the rogue. These quesions matter to me in terms of crafting value.
My thoughts on this are kind of all over the place.
I don't craft. It's generally a hinderance to me. I backed a pvp game a few years ago, turns out it's pretty much log into the world, chop down trees, smash rocks, mine ore, build basic weapons, venture out, find better resources, build better weapons, etc. This is far too much effort for what I want in an adventure pvp game (Or any game). I am not a crafter, I don't have any desire to be a merchant. I run dungeons with friends/guildies, I raid mobs in groups or raid forces. There are many people I know who like the crafting aspect, I just can't do it.
I think it would be cool if mobs dropped a variety of mats that we could provide guild crafters to create quality loot instead of just having bosses drop rare tunics and weapons. I think there is a lot of potential with crafting if done right. Being overly focused on it is, imo, the wrong path to take. Eventually everyone levels to max, then the prestige and mystery of it is gone regardless of how "cool" your crafting system is. Also, there are many crafting games now, even more crafting survival games. How many times do we have to implement crafting systems before we recognize that meaningful crafting when you are not actually blacksmithing a hammer in real life, prepping or cooking a meal, etc. is just going to be a menu system or a really cool concept that is exceptionally hard (such as Kingdom Come: Deliverance). Go grind me a sharp edge please... (Grinds out a baseball bat).
So in short, we will get a few people in the guild who craft different things, then we farm mats for them to create for everyone. Everyone who wants to grind it out does so to better the guild.
Relating abilities to crafting is also a bit infuriating. Classes like the rogue who, until later expansions, had to use poisons and a lot of inventory management to be the most effective. Not a fan. It's one thing if you create one item that you can use for a long period of real life time. It's another if I have to create 10,000 items for a day of battle while carrying it around in dungeons. I know, first world problems, but this should be a game, not a sim right?
Unless this game is going to have a player driven economy with significant item decay/unavoidable item destruction, I don't really see the reason to have a large amount of influence on crafting. I can see significant reason to include a solid crafting system, but it should align with what your development goals are. If we are going to be dungeon running for rare loot for the majority of our gear and items do not have unavoidable destruction, we already know that player made crafted armor will lead to massive inflation and still be subpar to dungeon/raid/world drops. Unless part of some epic quest that only the top 3 guilds will ever complete by locking down the world spawns.
Regardless of my opinions on crafting, VR and Pantheon have actually consistently kept me happy with the direction they have chosen unlike the grand majority of other games I have backed. I really have not had any significant disappointments during this development and am still very optimistic and excited about the future. So whatever your team decides, I am positive that it will be the best for your end product.
Best wishes.
Kilsin said:Crafting - How much do you like crafting in MMORPGs, is crafting something you expect to be in-game and how important do you think it is for the game even if you don't craft? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters
I like crafting very much. I also think it is a valuable part of the game. Without crafting I think you would get tired of the constant grind with nothing to do wth your spare time.
It is not just crafting that is effecting your time but also foraging,mineing,forestring etc.
Kilsin said:Crafting - How much do you like crafting in MMORPGs, is crafting something you expect to be in-game and how important do you think it is for the game even if you don't craft? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters
Extremely. It's one of the things I enjoy doing most when I'm not dungeon delving with some friends. I like somewhat complex systems but not needlessly wasteful complications. For example, I enjoyed the complicated process of Vanguard's and its many interdependence on other crafts. As to where ESO has multiple craftable sets that have to be made from different locations and many of those are never used for much of anything. But what I can't stand are overly simple systems such as those where you load up with a bunch of crafting mats, hit auto-craft all and go make a sandwich. Those systems are lazy, easily inflated, and allow everyone to easily get to a point where they can make everything and remove the usefulness of a skilled crafter.
I think maxing out a crafting skill should be just as lengthy and complex as maxing out your adventure leveling.
I enjoy crafting and hope it is done well in Pantheon, though I do it secondary to adventuring. I agree that is an important aspect of the game and should help the player economy as well as making another option for gear. I also agree with what was said about crafting components. I've disliked games where 3/4 of my limited bad space was all crafting components.
I don't mind crafting being more than click and wait for it to be finished as long as it's not annoying. I *really* disliked how the did crafting in EQ2 for example.
I also think it's cool when you name is attached to an item. Especially since they have said items will remain tradable (not BoE) other than special cases like quest items.