If you want to address cooking as an example you have to place it within a context that supports it.
And that's what people have mostly been stating about crafting in general. In a lot of instances it's just not a properly supported aspect of play.
If cooking was to be consequential, it'd require extra values and aspects that a chef would be able to tailor for the players , making an asset for game play that would be seen in some regards as a necessity and in other regards as a status symbol.
That notion right there is important, as it's a strong part of cooking in real life too. There is a major chunk of culinary arts that is very much a matter of status and very little to do with actual quality or flavor. It's an aspect that bothers me, but it's a big factor none the less.
Ingraining such an aspect into a game mechanic would mean establishing a notion of scarcity to the novel elements that food can provide so that chefs that have access to and can provide not just quality dishes, but ones that can be used as a symbol of status for both the one making it an the one receiving/using/displaying it would go a long way in establishing the value of a chef crafter, for better or worse.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
I think what everyone has been saying is great. But, if a crafting system was implemented that gave you a deep level of customizability wouldnt cooking be unaffected? Because it seems like the only thing an in-game chef could do is make meals with progressively better stats to offer. Not much creativity in that. Is there any room for deep crafting/experimentation in cooking? It seems rather limited, or is it just me?
repost of my cooking system idea from another forums:
I have this idea for a cooking system (and alchemy could be a bit similar): First of all let me say that I hate when game punish you for not doing something (hunger penalty). It's a game, why should I be forced into something I dont want to do? It is imho much better when game rewards you for doing things (eating buffs), even tho end result is quite similar (you dont eat -> you are "penalized" compared to others).
Basics of the idea is this: there are no recipes, you can mix anything eddible together and eat it. If you like the result, you can save what you just made as a new recipe. All stats of the materials you use are invisible, you dont know what item does until someone tells you or you eat it yourself.
Each edible item will have 5 basic cooking stats: calories, bitter, sweet, salty, sour. First one tells you how much you can eat: char has a "hunger" meter which is filled with nr. of calories you eat. Let say you can eat 1000 calories of food. If you eat too much (over 120% of 1000 = 1200+ calories), you will get debuff Bloated which decreases your stats. You also start randomly "vomit" (this will happen even if you eat just slightly over 1000, just with lesser frequency). Each "vomitting" is a 5 sec stun, but it also decrease your hunger meter by e.g. 50 (5%) and gives you stackable debuff Eat sick which prevents you to eat anything for significant time - even alchemistic products and potions. Remaining 4 stats decide if what you make is edible - if sum of one of the stats is too much higher then the rest, food is inedible and instead of positive buff you get debuff Too sweet/sour/bitter/salty, which 1. tells you what "went wrong" (what stat in the food needs to be lower) and 2. during the debuff any subsequent food has this stat doubled, so even proven food is suddenly too <stat> for you. Another 2 stats materials have (but they can be empty/0) is PoisonType and ToxicityLevel. A lot of the "edible" things are in some way poisonous and while you can still eat them, you will get poisoned by the resulting food. Fortunatelly, a lot of other things work as a cure (ToxicityLevel < 0) for given PoisonType, so if you find the right combination, you can neutralise even really strong poison (there could even exist item that more or less gives you immunity against certain type of food poison (ToxicityLevel extra low, e.g. -9999999)). Or have poison so strong you will die immediatelly .
Then there are stats which actually affects the positive buff from proper food - each material can have stats like "+5 to Str, +10 to Dex" but also e.g. "-10% to calories" or "-10 to ToxicityLevels". Besides that each material have 4 stats which don't work on its own (and this is something all materials can have, not only cooking ones): Bonus Stat/Value and Penalty Stat/Value (as with poison, these stats can be empty/0). These stats multiply (bonus) and divide (penalty) given stat in all other used material, so if you use materials with +3,+2,+3,+1 to Str together with material with BonusStat = Str and BonusValue = 3, food will give +27 to Str. If it had PenaltyStat = Str and PenaltyValue=3, resulting food would only give +3 to Str.
If this isn't complex enough, each set of there stats can be assigned to different "state" of material - raw, cooked, roasted, juiced/drinkable etc. and for each state it could have different stats and therefore different effect.
I think what everyone has been saying is great. But, if a crafting system was implemented that gave you a deep level of customizability wouldnt cooking be unaffected? Because it seems like the only thing an in-game chef could do is make meals with progressively better stats to offer. Not much creativity in that. Is there any room for deep crafting/experimentation in cooking? It seems rather limited, or is it just me?
Sure you can.
But everything must be balanced with pve content, so predetermined values on all items are set.
If all values in the game are already set, crafting becomes a secondary system. Collection and trading may become core game systems, but crafting is just click to assemble.
If you want deep crafting, you must rethink balance. Better yet, just rethink the mmorpg design.
i dont understand the obsession of today's players with "balance" - balance in rpg is imo actually horrible thing. each char should be able to specialize, be best at something, while getting a.. kicked in other areas.
i would like to see system where you dont have advancement at all restricted (only by time, since the higher your skill level, the more time it takes to advance further), mobs are so hard that players have to band together to beat them and group size isnt at all limited.
Puzzle Pirates had the best concept with each crafting job having its' own unique mini-game. Star Wars Galaxies has probably the deepest crafting system. Both those games came out in 2003. MMOs have been going backwards since then.
Basically crafting should be the main way gear is introduced to the game. Boss and raids should only drop crafting materials and not whole pieces of gear. How does killing a dragon and finding a mage robe inside it make any sense at all? The way it should be done is kill the dragon and it drops dragon hide and other dragon parts. You then take these materials to a crafter and the crafter makes the dragon hide mage robe or some other dragon item. Having a materials based system leads to an organic player driven economy.
When people think of sandbox games people always jump on the open world bandwagon. It is NOT the open world it is the type of economy that makes a game a sandbox. Remember WoW has an open world too but what separates WoW from old sandboxes like SWG is the economy. Having a player run economy is an absolute requirement for designing non-linear progression.
No, crafting should never replace something but augment it. You can have deep meaningful crafting without removing the "possibly" #1 thing that RPG's have going for them. You can't remove things like Loot Drops, Progression or Dungeon Crawling without alienating a huge segment of the RPG/MMO playerbase. I know I'd never touch a game that didn't include all 3 of those pillars which has been a staple of the genre since the introduction of Dungeons & Dragons in the late 1970's.
Plus I'd argue that Asheron's Call was a huge success in following those 3 pillars of MMO/RPG and it included the most robust loot/treasure system to date! Not only that but it had in its hey day the most robust economy in any game I've played since I got into the genre. So it's folly to think that a Crafting centric game is the only way to have a great economy. It was the proliferation of Bind on Equip or Bind on Pick-Up that ruined MMO economies, nothing else. Removing loot drops de-incentivizes players from hunting and questing and killing mobs. There's no joy in knowing that if I kill 400 Rats I can have a crafter make me a Rat Pelt Cloak. There's no hidden mystery, no sense of excitement and no thrill in knowing exactly what I wil lget once I finish something. Or at least there isn't for me.
i would say that if done right, even the loot happy players could be happy with "only craft materials drop from mobs" system. if you would not be able to craft any really good items w/o rare/dungeon/raid drops, then i think it could w/o much problems replace "loot whole set of eq from a bear" system.
sure it could get some time to get to used to that system if you prefer loot as your eq source, but once you do, you find out that it is actually better - you make crafting friends who hapilly trade you your great looted materials for their great crafted eq.
Puzzle Pirates had the best concept with each crafting job having its' own unique mini-game. Star Wars Galaxies has probably the deepest crafting system. Both those games came out in 2003. MMOs have been going backwards since then.
Basically crafting should be the main way gear is introduced to the game. Boss and raids should only drop crafting materials and not whole pieces of gear. How does killing a dragon and finding a mage robe inside it make any sense at all? The way it should be done is kill the dragon and it drops dragon hide and other dragon parts. You then take these materials to a crafter and the crafter makes the dragon hide mage robe or some other dragon item. Having a materials based system leads to an organic player driven economy.
When people think of sandbox games people always jump on the open world bandwagon. It is NOT the open world it is the type of economy that makes a game a sandbox. Remember WoW has an open world too but what separates WoW from old sandboxes like SWG is the economy. Having a player run economy is an absolute requirement for designing non-linear progression.
No, crafting should never replace something but augment it. You can have deep meaningful crafting without removing the "possibly" #1 thing that RPG's have going for them. You can't remove things like Loot Drops, Progression or Dungeon Crawling without alienating a huge segment of the RPG/MMO playerbase. I know I'd never touch a game that didn't include all 3 of those pillars which has been a staple of the genre since the introduction of Dungeons & Dragons in the late 1970's.
Plus I'd argue that Asheron's Call was a huge success in following those 3 pillars of MMO/RPG and it included the most robust loot/treasure system to date! Not only that but it had in its hey day the most robust economy in any game I've played since I got into the genre. So it's folly to think that a Crafting centric game is the only way to have a great economy. It was the proliferation of Bind on Equip or Bind on Pick-Up that ruined MMO economies, nothing else. Removing loot drops de-incentivizes players from hunting and questing and killing mobs. There's no joy in knowing that if I kill 400 Rats I can have a crafter make me a Rat Pelt Cloak. There's no hidden mystery, no sense of excitement and no thrill in knowing exactly what I wil lget once I finish something. Or at least there isn't for me.
I would say that if done right, even the loot happy players could be happy with "only craft materials drop from mobs" system. if you would not be able to craft any really good items w/o rare/dungeon/raid drops, then i think it could w/o much problems replace "loot whole set of eq from a bear" system.
sure it could get some time to get to used to that system if you prefer loot as your eq source, but once you do, you find out that it is actually better - you make crafting friends who hapilly trade you your great looted materials for their great crafted eq.
Believe it or not I am not even a crafter and prefer the Only craft materials drop from mobs system. Having rares and common materials is exactly how Vindictus does it and they do an amazing job with loot.
The main advantage of this system is it creates a player driven economy as well as these additional benefits.
- More fair loot distributions - Everyone gets loot
- Less drama of people fighting over loot. Ninja looting is impossible.
- No need for complicated DKP systems
- No wasted loot - Gear never gets sold to NPC because materials are useful to crafters
- Crafting rares are always worth good money. Easy to make money if you are poor.
For me this is the ideal way of doing loot. I don't think I could ever go back to WoW clone Need before Greed style loot or drama causing DKP raiding.
I'm sure many of you have seen the anime Sword Art Online. After watching it about a dozen times I came to the realization that one of my favorite episodes is the one with Lisbeth. Why? For some reason I felt it was so astronomically improbable for an MMO player to have a FAVORITE/DEDICATED crafter it blew my mind and sent my world into a tailspin (also, only being able to get rare crafting materials if you have a master level crafter in your party is genius!).
After playing a dozen or so MMOs (even FFXIV) crafting seems to be useless. Its not engaging, its not fun, it barely has a purpose, and it just seems to be there.
You're looking in the wrong place for what you want. Crafting is completely secondary in the level-based class-restricted MMOs. Try some of the skill-based MMOs and you'll find not only dedicated crafters but a wide variety of ways to implement such mechanics. Some suggestions:
A Tale in the Desert
Ultima Online
EVE Online
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I have not liked any implementation of cooking so far. It is essentially a consumable-based long-term buff. And long-term buffs aren't very good to begin with when they end up being a "must-have" or not worth the effort.
For example, cooking buffs don't bring any additional depth to combat, because you cannot remove, apply or manipulate them in combat. Either you have it or you don't. For the sake of the engagement, it might as well be permanent. So why are they not permanent? -Because the cook needs to keep cooking.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I have not liked any implementation of cooking so far. It is essentially a consumable-based long-term buff. And long-term buffs aren't very good to begin with when they end up being a "must-have" or not worth the effort.
For example, cooking buffs don't bring any additional depth to combat, because you cannot remove, apply or manipulate them in combat. Either you have it or you don't. For the sake of the engagement, it might as well be permanent. So why are they not permanent? -Because the cook needs to keep cooking.
In swg you could eat at any time you wanted. Defense vs Dizzy, defense vs knockdown, blue milk? Food was essential to Bounty hunters and jedi. Not necessary.
It gave long term buffs too, but nothing that you couldn't get elsewhere. Instead of getting a mind buff you could drink something and get a buff that lasted half as long depending on how good the chef was.
It wasn't great, but you could play as a chef and only a chef and be just as successful as a Jedi.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
I have not liked any implementation of cooking so far. It is essentially a consumable-based long-term buff. And long-term buffs aren't very good to begin with when they end up being a "must-have" or not worth the effort.
For example, cooking buffs don't bring any additional depth to combat, because you cannot remove, apply or manipulate them in combat. Either you have it or you don't. For the sake of the engagement, it might as well be permanent. So why are they not permanent? -Because the cook needs to keep cooking.
In swg you could eat at any time you wanted. Defense vs Dizzy, defense vs knockdown, blue milk? Food was essential to Bounty hunters and jedi. Not necessary.
It gave long term buffs too, but nothing that you couldn't get elsewhere. Instead of getting a mind buff you could drink something and get a buff that lasted half as long depending on how good the chef was.
It wasn't great, but you could play as a chef and only a chef and be just as successful as a Jedi.
Yey? -Not worth it. There is no up-side for me.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I have not liked any implementation of cooking so far. It is essentially a consumable-based long-term buff. And long-term buffs aren't very good to begin with when they end up being a "must-have" or not worth the effort.
For example, cooking buffs don't bring any additional depth to combat, because you cannot remove, apply or manipulate them in combat. Either you have it or you don't. For the sake of the engagement, it might as well be permanent. So why are they not permanent? -Because the cook needs to keep cooking.
In swg you could eat at any time you wanted. Defense vs Dizzy, defense vs knockdown, blue milk? Food was essential to Bounty hunters and jedi. Not necessary.
It gave long term buffs too, but nothing that you couldn't get elsewhere. Instead of getting a mind buff you could drink something and get a buff that lasted half as long depending on how good the chef was.
It wasn't great, but you could play as a chef and only a chef and be just as successful as a Jedi.
Yey? -Not worth it. There is no up-side for me.
Ok then. I assume nothing but a complete abandonment of cooking as gameplay would satisfy you since you only seem to care about how it doesn't work for you personally rather than the ways it has or could or those that do find enjoyment?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
I have not liked any implementation of cooking so far. It is essentially a consumable-based long-term buff. And long-term buffs aren't very good to begin with when they end up being a "must-have" or not worth the effort.
For example, cooking buffs don't bring any additional depth to combat, because you cannot remove, apply or manipulate them in combat. Either you have it or you don't. For the sake of the engagement, it might as well be permanent. So why are they not permanent? -Because the cook needs to keep cooking.
In swg you could eat at any time you wanted. Defense vs Dizzy, defense vs knockdown, blue milk? Food was essential to Bounty hunters and jedi. Not necessary.
It gave long term buffs too, but nothing that you couldn't get elsewhere. Instead of getting a mind buff you could drink something and get a buff that lasted half as long depending on how good the chef was.
It wasn't great, but you could play as a chef and only a chef and be just as successful as a Jedi.
Yey? -Not worth it. There is no up-side for me.
Ok then. I assume nothing but a complete abandonment of cooking as gameplay would satisfy you since you only seem to care about how it doesn't work for you personally rather than the ways it has or could or those that do find enjoyment?
No, I am not in favor of it if their enjoyment comes at the expense of mine. I am sure you think the same way.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Each resource should have differing properties and with each resource there should be variable qualities. So when you harvest a resource you are always looking for better quality. SWG did that very well. Obtaining a rare material of exceptional quality should enable a crafter to produce a superior item. Usually 2 crafters will make exactly the same item, everytime they make it. With the ability to make items with differing resource quality you can actually make items that peple want to purchase.
Items in the world
I hate, REALLY hate, that in most games crafting is next to useless and the fact that the best items are from drops. What I really hate is not that really cool items are in the game, it is that the crafting system will not let you make the items...How the fuck do these items exist if no one can make them!!!
So to start with a game needs to be designed so that anything that is introduced into the game that isn't a natural resource (gathered, harvested, mined, grown, killed etc...) has to be have been crafted. IF there are items to be found in the world then at some point, even if it would take a huge amount of effort, that same item must be craftable.
Making stuff
I would love a system where a combination of the quality of the resources made to craft an item and the skill of the character in the craft are used to determine a number of customisation options. So if you are a skilled crafter with crappy material or have high quality material but litle skill then you won't be able to customise an item as much as you could if you have high quality materials and a lot of skill.
The ability to customise every item, even if it is just to do things like add differnt hits or blade designs for swords, the colour, size etc... would be great.
Also, crafting should have risk so that you could lose materials if you really botch a job. Higher quality material and more complicated items should be possible to craft with lower skill but more risky.
The job doesn't end
Crafters should also be part of the onging process of maintaining equipment. This means that wear and tear needs to be part of the crafting process. Items do not last forever and will eventually break. You should be able to prolong the life of an item by repairing it but eventually items should break. Some resources could be re-used but essentially for crafting to have any sustained use in game things need to be removed from the system.
As many have said previously in this thread, SWG had the best overall crafting implementation ever done in any MMO.
That was not only because the crafting process itself had depth, but also because the raw materials you used had an equal amount of depth. Those resources were grouped into specific classes and subtypes, and each one had a wide variety of attributes. And the attribute values changed every 2 to 4 weeks ! Not only that, but the location of the spawn changed randomly each time as well (there were no fixed nodes). And within each spawn area, the yield changed from place to place...
The ever-changing resource attributes are what allowed crafters to make "unique" items. All the different types of mineral, chemical, gas and water had different attributes, varying from like 3 per resource up to 6 or 7 (iirc).
All the items of a particular type had the same theoretical minimum and maximum stats. However, the maximum was almost never reached, because to reach it, you needed resources with "perfect" attribute values in all relevant categories. And that virtually never occurred, because with each new "spawn" of a particular resource, the values of each of its different attributes changed randomly.
If you managed to get your hands on some ore with a really good stat distribution for making gunbarrels, you could craft Blasters that did 20% or 30% more damage than average. But when your ore stash was used up, that was the end of it.
I have not liked any implementation of cooking so far. It is essentially a consumable-based long-term buff. And long-term buffs aren't very good to begin with when they end up being a "must-have" or not worth the effort.
For example, cooking buffs don't bring any additional depth to combat, because you cannot remove, apply or manipulate them in combat. Either you have it or you don't. For the sake of the engagement, it might as well be permanent. So why are they not permanent? -Because the cook needs to keep cooking.
In swg you could eat at any time you wanted. Defense vs Dizzy, defense vs knockdown, blue milk? Food was essential to Bounty hunters and jedi. Not necessary.
It gave long term buffs too, but nothing that you couldn't get elsewhere. Instead of getting a mind buff you could drink something and get a buff that lasted half as long depending on how good the chef was.
It wasn't great, but you could play as a chef and only a chef and be just as successful as a Jedi.
Yey? -Not worth it. There is no up-side for me.
I wonder if you feel the same about repairing weapons and armor? They are consumables for a reason....you consume them but they also in turn consume in-game currency. I'm waiting for the day that npcs no long do repairs and crafters will have to do them.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I know what I don't want. Some stupid little mini game that makes me push buttons in a pattern over and over to craft.
I think the biggest issues for me is it needs to take a lot of time and effort to be a good crafter so that not everyone will want to do it. That means you need to heavily restrict the gathering so not enough resources come into the game for every single player to craft. It also means that the stuff that is crafted needs to be some of the best gear in the game.
If you make crafting so easy that everyone maxes it out, you basically just made it worthless no matter what else you do.
I want a SWG type crafting system again were interdependence on other players was important and reputation about the quality of goods spread around your server and people knew you were good at your craft, crafting that isn't trivialized and marginlized by loot drops and dungeons like in most WoW themepark grinder #101. A dynamic resource system where not always the same materials will be there in areas, a good resource may spawn for 2 weeks and not come back for months or years, but another close to it in quality and quantity would spawn maybe a bit better or a bit less. Less people camping nodes and more exploration when scanning for resources.
I want variety in my crafting I don't want to just craft weapons, armor, and food; I want to be able to craft furniture, make paintings, create music, design buildings, construct ships or starships, bio-engineer companions or combat pets, construct ground vehicles and design them. I want to be able to add to the world, not make junk that noone uses.
Crafters should also be part of the onging process of maintaining equipment. This means that wear and tear needs to be part of the crafting process. Items do not last forever and will eventually break. You should be able to prolong the life of an item by repairing it but eventually items should break. Some resources could be re-used but essentially for crafting to have any sustained use in game things need to be removed from the system.
Comments
If you want to address cooking as an example you have to place it within a context that supports it.
And that's what people have mostly been stating about crafting in general. In a lot of instances it's just not a properly supported aspect of play.
If cooking was to be consequential, it'd require extra values and aspects that a chef would be able to tailor for the players , making an asset for game play that would be seen in some regards as a necessity and in other regards as a status symbol.
That notion right there is important, as it's a strong part of cooking in real life too. There is a major chunk of culinary arts that is very much a matter of status and very little to do with actual quality or flavor. It's an aspect that bothers me, but it's a big factor none the less.
Ingraining such an aspect into a game mechanic would mean establishing a notion of scarcity to the novel elements that food can provide so that chefs that have access to and can provide not just quality dishes, but ones that can be used as a symbol of status for both the one making it an the one receiving/using/displaying it would go a long way in establishing the value of a chef crafter, for better or worse.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
repost of my cooking system idea from another forums:
I have this idea for a cooking system (and alchemy could be a bit similar):
First of all let me say that I hate when game punish you for not doing something (hunger penalty). It's a game, why should I be forced into something I dont want to do? It is imho much better when game rewards you for doing things (eating buffs), even tho end result is quite similar (you dont eat -> you are "penalized" compared to others).
Basics of the idea is this: there are no recipes, you can mix anything eddible together and eat it. If you like the result, you can save what you just made as a new recipe. All stats of the materials you use are invisible, you dont know what item does until someone tells you or you eat it yourself.
Each edible item will have 5 basic cooking stats: calories, bitter, sweet, salty, sour. First one tells you how much you can eat: char has a "hunger" meter which is filled with nr. of calories you eat. Let say you can eat 1000 calories of food. If you eat too much (over 120% of 1000 = 1200+ calories), you will get debuff Bloated which decreases your stats. You also start randomly "vomit" (this will happen even if you eat just slightly over 1000, just with lesser frequency). Each "vomitting" is a 5 sec stun, but it also decrease your hunger meter by e.g. 50 (5%) and gives you stackable debuff Eat sick which prevents you to eat anything for significant time - even alchemistic products and potions.
Remaining 4 stats decide if what you make is edible - if sum of one of the stats is too much higher then the rest, food is inedible and instead of positive buff you get debuff Too sweet/sour/bitter/salty, which 1. tells you what "went wrong" (what stat in the food needs to be lower) and 2. during the debuff any subsequent food has this stat doubled, so even proven food is suddenly too <stat> for you.
Another 2 stats materials have (but they can be empty/0) is PoisonType and ToxicityLevel. A lot of the "edible" things are in some way poisonous and while you can still eat them, you will get poisoned by the resulting food. Fortunatelly, a lot of other things work as a cure (ToxicityLevel < 0) for given PoisonType, so if you find the right combination, you can neutralise even really strong poison (there could even exist item that more or less gives you immunity against certain type of food poison (ToxicityLevel extra low, e.g. -9999999)). Or have poison so strong you will die immediatelly .
Then there are stats which actually affects the positive buff from proper food - each material can have stats like "+5 to Str, +10 to Dex" but also e.g. "-10% to calories" or "-10 to ToxicityLevels". Besides that each material have 4 stats which don't work on its own (and this is something all materials can have, not only cooking ones): Bonus Stat/Value and Penalty Stat/Value (as with poison, these stats can be empty/0). These stats multiply (bonus) and divide (penalty) given stat in all other used material, so if you use materials with +3,+2,+3,+1 to Str together with material with BonusStat = Str and BonusValue = 3, food will give +27 to Str. If it had PenaltyStat = Str and PenaltyValue=3, resulting food would only give +3 to Str.
If this isn't complex enough, each set of there stats can be assigned to different "state" of material - raw, cooked, roasted, juiced/drinkable etc. and for each state it could have different stats and therefore different effect.
i dont understand the obsession of today's players with "balance" - balance in rpg is imo actually horrible thing. each char should be able to specialize, be best at something, while getting a.. kicked in other areas.
i would like to see system where you dont have advancement at all restricted (only by time, since the higher your skill level, the more time it takes to advance further), mobs are so hard that players have to band together to beat them and group size isnt at all limited.
i would say that if done right, even the loot happy players could be happy with "only craft materials drop from mobs" system. if you would not be able to craft any really good items w/o rare/dungeon/raid drops, then i think it could w/o much problems replace "loot whole set of eq from a bear" system.
sure it could get some time to get to used to that system if you prefer loot as your eq source, but once you do, you find out that it is actually better - you make crafting friends who hapilly trade you your great looted materials for their great crafted eq.
Believe it or not I am not even a crafter and prefer the Only craft materials drop from mobs system. Having rares and common materials is exactly how Vindictus does it and they do an amazing job with loot.
The main advantage of this system is it creates a player driven economy as well as these additional benefits.
- More fair loot distributions - Everyone gets loot
- Less drama of people fighting over loot. Ninja looting is impossible.
- No need for complicated DKP systems
- No wasted loot - Gear never gets sold to NPC because materials are useful to crafters
- Crafting rares are always worth good money. Easy to make money if you are poor.
For me this is the ideal way of doing loot. I don't think I could ever go back to WoW clone Need before Greed style loot or drama causing DKP raiding.
You're looking in the wrong place for what you want. Crafting is completely secondary in the level-based class-restricted MMOs. Try some of the skill-based MMOs and you'll find not only dedicated crafters but a wide variety of ways to implement such mechanics. Some suggestions:
A Tale in the Desert
Ultima Online
EVE Online
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I have not liked any implementation of cooking so far. It is essentially a consumable-based long-term buff. And long-term buffs aren't very good to begin with when they end up being a "must-have" or not worth the effort.
For example, cooking buffs don't bring any additional depth to combat, because you cannot remove, apply or manipulate them in combat. Either you have it or you don't. For the sake of the engagement, it might as well be permanent. So why are they not permanent? -Because the cook needs to keep cooking.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
In swg you could eat at any time you wanted. Defense vs Dizzy, defense vs knockdown, blue milk? Food was essential to Bounty hunters and jedi. Not necessary.
It gave long term buffs too, but nothing that you couldn't get elsewhere. Instead of getting a mind buff you could drink something and get a buff that lasted half as long depending on how good the chef was.
It wasn't great, but you could play as a chef and only a chef and be just as successful as a Jedi.
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
Yey? -Not worth it. There is no up-side for me.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Ok then. I assume nothing but a complete abandonment of cooking as gameplay would satisfy you since you only seem to care about how it doesn't work for you personally rather than the ways it has or could or those that do find enjoyment?
"If the Damned gave you a roadmap, then you'd know just where to go"
No, I am not in favor of it if their enjoyment comes at the expense of mine. I am sure you think the same way.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Resources
Each resource should have differing properties and with each resource there should be variable qualities. So when you harvest a resource you are always looking for better quality. SWG did that very well. Obtaining a rare material of exceptional quality should enable a crafter to produce a superior item. Usually 2 crafters will make exactly the same item, everytime they make it. With the ability to make items with differing resource quality you can actually make items that peple want to purchase.
Items in the world
I hate, REALLY hate, that in most games crafting is next to useless and the fact that the best items are from drops. What I really hate is not that really cool items are in the game, it is that the crafting system will not let you make the items...How the fuck do these items exist if no one can make them!!!
So to start with a game needs to be designed so that anything that is introduced into the game that isn't a natural resource (gathered, harvested, mined, grown, killed etc...) has to be have been crafted. IF there are items to be found in the world then at some point, even if it would take a huge amount of effort, that same item must be craftable.
Making stuff
I would love a system where a combination of the quality of the resources made to craft an item and the skill of the character in the craft are used to determine a number of customisation options. So if you are a skilled crafter with crappy material or have high quality material but litle skill then you won't be able to customise an item as much as you could if you have high quality materials and a lot of skill.
The ability to customise every item, even if it is just to do things like add differnt hits or blade designs for swords, the colour, size etc... would be great.
Also, crafting should have risk so that you could lose materials if you really botch a job. Higher quality material and more complicated items should be possible to craft with lower skill but more risky.
The job doesn't end
Crafters should also be part of the onging process of maintaining equipment. This means that wear and tear needs to be part of the crafting process. Items do not last forever and will eventually break. You should be able to prolong the life of an item by repairing it but eventually items should break. Some resources could be re-used but essentially for crafting to have any sustained use in game things need to be removed from the system.
As many have said previously in this thread, SWG had the best overall crafting implementation ever done in any MMO.
That was not only because the crafting process itself had depth, but also because the raw materials you used had an equal amount of depth. Those resources were grouped into specific classes and subtypes, and each one had a wide variety of attributes. And the attribute values changed every 2 to 4 weeks ! Not only that, but the location of the spawn changed randomly each time as well (there were no fixed nodes). And within each spawn area, the yield changed from place to place...
The ever-changing resource attributes are what allowed crafters to make "unique" items. All the different types of mineral, chemical, gas and water had different attributes, varying from like 3 per resource up to 6 or 7 (iirc).
All the items of a particular type had the same theoretical minimum and maximum stats. However, the maximum was almost never reached, because to reach it, you needed resources with "perfect" attribute values in all relevant categories. And that virtually never occurred, because with each new "spawn" of a particular resource, the values of each of its different attributes changed randomly.
If you managed to get your hands on some ore with a really good stat distribution for making gunbarrels, you could craft Blasters that did 20% or 30% more damage than average. But when your ore stash was used up, that was the end of it.
I wonder if you feel the same about repairing weapons and armor? They are consumables for a reason....you consume them but they also in turn consume in-game currency. I'm waiting for the day that npcs no long do repairs and crafters will have to do them.
"Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, great minds talk about ideas."
I know what I don't want. Some stupid little mini game that makes me push buttons in a pattern over and over to craft.
I think the biggest issues for me is it needs to take a lot of time and effort to be a good crafter so that not everyone will want to do it. That means you need to heavily restrict the gathering so not enough resources come into the game for every single player to craft. It also means that the stuff that is crafted needs to be some of the best gear in the game.
If you make crafting so easy that everyone maxes it out, you basically just made it worthless no matter what else you do.
I want it to be an alternative to raid gear. Just as good, not better.
If you enjoy raids, LFG and so forth, enjoy and have fun.
If you don't, you craft and end up in the same place using different game features.
The only games that have come close are SWG and LotRO.
FF14 was but with the coke and Potash, it's just a busted time sink.
I want a SWG type crafting system again were interdependence on other players was important and reputation about the quality of goods spread around your server and people knew you were good at your craft, crafting that isn't trivialized and marginlized by loot drops and dungeons like in most WoW themepark grinder #101. A dynamic resource system where not always the same materials will be there in areas, a good resource may spawn for 2 weeks and not come back for months or years, but another close to it in quality and quantity would spawn maybe a bit better or a bit less. Less people camping nodes and more exploration when scanning for resources.
I want variety in my crafting I don't want to just craft weapons, armor, and food; I want to be able to craft furniture, make paintings, create music, design buildings, construct ships or starships, bio-engineer companions or combat pets, construct ground vehicles and design them. I want to be able to add to the world, not make junk that noone uses.
Now that sounds like a chore.