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Explain to me the appeal of a Crafting Focused MMO
azzamasin
Member UncommonPosts: 3,105
When I talk about Crafting focused or Crafting Centric I am not talking about building like Minecraft But having little to no loot drops and instead all Armor and Weapons being crafted.
My biggest reason is I fail to see the incentive to actually hunting and exploring, let alone tackling tough boss mob types. I come from an Asheron's Call MMO background where Loot played a major role in the longevity of the game and to this day I fail to see how Crafting can be as rewarding as finding that 1 in a million rare drop. Now I am not talking about doing instance raids, as I hate that style of loot acquisition but instead I prefer a more Diablo/ARPG style approach to acquiring gear, through random drops and luck of the draw.
I've never played a Crafting Centric sandbox where gear is predominantly attained via crafting but I fail to see the appeal in it, and it is a prime concern for me when discussing EQN. Why would I go out hunting, exploring and grinding mobs when I know theres little value in doing so......This is also a primary reason for me quitting games like GW2 and now Neverwinter. Both Crafting Centric and Raid/Party Specific styles of MMO are on opposite ends of the spectrum, where both styles either remove the option or require a group. If this makes any sense let me just explain it like this. We are not grouped 24/7 in an MMO in fact my time spent in a group is on the order of 5%. What this means is that 95% of my time is spent by myself solo, when this happens I want to do what I enjoy....things like explore and hunting but when I know my time is spent wasted because I will never acquire anything useful I get bored rather quick. Does this make sense? Its hard to describe but I decided to quit Neverwinter because my enjoyment has waned even though I enjoyed the combat and the Foundry but there was something missing and it took me a few days to figure it out. It all boils down to not being properly rewarded for doing what I enjoy and to me the best way to reward me is through random loot drops. It's what I enjoyed so much about Asheron's Call, it kept me playing for longer then any MMO because I never knew what I would get.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Comments
put as simply as possible
creation versus destruction
In Lineage 2 gear was difficult to craft as there were failure rates as well as the need for a LOT of materials.
so you had two choices for gear. Either craft it (or get players to craft it which meant you soon learned who were the responsible, trustworthy crafters) or you could raid for it.
The raids typically gave gear you could craft but were difficult in many cases and you were not guaranteed to get whatever you wanted.
Therefore raiding was still important, especially for guilds but crafters were still needed as raids didn't guarantee a steady influx of new gear.
Also, gear was taken out of the world because enchanting it meant that there was a chance it would be destroyed. So there was always a need for more gear.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I fail to see the point of running the same dungeon over and over again in the hopes that the pants you need to finish your set finally drop.
EVE is a PVP/Crafting centric game which has a relatively stable economy.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Or you could read my post and learn that I also do not like this method of gear acquisition either.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
So your incentive is to provide materials for crafters? As a noob to this game style, it doesn't appeal to me at all sorry.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Agreed. I guess it's a personal preference thing. Running the same dungeon over and over for a chance at possibly getting rare drops that I need in order to repeat the cycle at a higher level dungeon just doesn't appeal to me. However, the crafting/tinkering systems of UO, AC and EVE are systems that have entertained me for hundreds and hundreds of hours.
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 see you never played SWG, just about everything was player created, yet a fully crafting focused character had no way to hunt for things like Krayt scales which were required to make top end equipment. Hence where community oriented design came into play, a combat player gathered these things and sold or traded them to a crafter, giving that combat oriented character plenty of reasons to hunt harder mobs.
On top of that exploring uncovered far more valuable resources. Which a crafter could place equipment that collected said resource.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The posts above capture my feelings on the subject: the aethetic of a creative act, the alternative questing mechnic and the economy as a dynamic system in the world (or even as a micro-economy between alts).
The problem with the 1-in-a-million drop is that there's always a danger you'll get it.
So your incentive is to provide materials for crafters? As a noob to this game style, it doesn't appeal to me at all sorry.
What does appeal to you then? Because I can guarantee there is a way to incorporate what you like about mmos into a crafting focused experience.
This isn't entirely true. Crafting blueprints and components could be acquired as loot or be in dangerous areas. For example, ectoplasm in GW2 comes from rare/exotic items that you get from bosses and dungeons. You can also get jewelry blueprints as random drops in specific dungeons, letting you cash in on dungeon tokens better than usually. Admittedly GW2 is a bad example, because its world bosses suck are are way too easy, but I'm just using it because of its popularity.
So, you wouldn't visit a dangerous area to kill Supermooks that drop Superweapons, but would visit it to mine Superore that's used to craft those Superweapons.
Also this.
Ignoring your preference for the game in which is given as example in this clip, I think it illustrates pretty well the difference between crafted gear vs dropped gear and what feeling may each give to the player.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-jc-pennys-effect
To craft or not to craft......is all about individual preference
My self...I love a game with a great crafting system(there isn't many of those).
I love to differentiate myself from many of the players by giving myself skills others don't have.I have special items others might not have and it can be a great way to make money and all that money brings.
My ideal game has great pve ...great faction conflict...great crafting and ideally great housing.
That unfortunately paints me into a pretty small corner of game choices.
Currently i'm making do with Aion.....until my next real choice comes along.
Well the incentive it to supply crafters with materials so they can make desired items or you can sell these materials and make money.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Many of the great crafting mmos gave the hunter an incentive by dropping a rare crafting mat from the boss that you would then take to a crafter to have your item forged. Finding the right crafter with the best skills and quality of mats to go with it was also part of the experience. The rare item would then give it better stats that you could never get with just norm mats.
Crafting games are often more about an economy instead of loot or progression. Exploration and searching out rare items to bring back and sell to someone ect ect. They always involve item decay or they become very stagnant. The best ones don't have set locations for these rare mats so it becomes more about searching out these things than farming a single location.
They really aren't the type of game that a wow player would be interested in...and I don't mean that as an insult. They're just the total opposite of each other in the spectrum of gaming.
well i will look away from the facts that there are people who like crafting more then combat (e.g. me), because thats not really what are you talking about.
full crafting w/o eq drops is usually done through mobs dropping crafting components, stronger the mob rarer the component, and people who like combat simply fight for those and then trade them to crafters for eq.
edit: hehe, went afk with thread open and before i came back and wrote my comment, others had already written it
It's the loot that matters (seemingly) to him.
Yet, he should know, SWG filled the other end of the spectrum as well (phat lootz) yet it didn't cancel out crafted gear. As Phat lootz typically had bad base damage and/or weak condition, they were used for DOT effects and just that. They were switched in and out for main crafted weapons. Think of them as an all important sidearm (all this directed at Azz not Foom, Foom already knows this
).
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
In Star Wars Galaxies, I was still a sniper and hunted like anyone else, except on the side I ran some power generators out in the middle of nowhere. In which case, I'd take those power cells, go to the market, and sell them to those who needed power cells for their harvesting machines. While that may not sound fun, it gave me something more to do than just hunt. I went out for the day, did my missions, then headed over to my power cells on my way home, grabbed them, and went back to play the market and make sure my power cells made it into farmers' hands. And consider architects in that game. I remember price hunting for the best architect to build our guild hall. It cost a ton, but we wanted to find someone we could trust, and had a decent price and reputation. It was a blast. So WHAT did this all do? Well, it added DEPTH to a game that could have just been "kill, combat, kill." MMOs need depth like that to thrive. The point of an MMO is to immerse the player in a living world. A combat treadmill doesn't do that.
Utlima Online... I didn't have a crafter. To make money, though, I'd often hunt and skin dragons for their valuable leather. It was dangerous work. If I accidentally pulled too many or misjudged I'd die and drop all the bounty. But the leather sold for good money at my vendor in town. Eventually, once that vendor stays fully stocked, leather workers will begin relying on it to carry exactly what they need. That gives a big edge in the market, because those crafters didn't want to have to shop around if they already have a reliable place to stop.
But Ultima gets better than all that. What if you want to hunt for those epic loot drops that you talk about? Go raid, then, ol' chap! Getting with a group of others, we'd venture to raid Dark Father, and go after a chance of getting one of his rare weapons or armor he drops. Again, dangerous and exciting work.
CONCLUSION: See what this did? It gave me extra depth. I knew my work as a Paladin wasn't just feeding the cog of an artificial economy. Crafting MMOs allow the hunter to have a real impact in the world. My price cutting for power cells in Star Wars caused all other prices of power cells to drop in competition. In Ultima, I wasn't just pulling garbage off of a mob in hopes of getting a rare drop, I was actually doing something dangerous and exciting and using it to make a profit off of dragon's leather. I was actually part of the world, and I didn't have to do an ounce of crafting. So do you see why crafting MMOs make it better for us hunters? It gives us as much immersion as it gives the crafters in the game. It makes it a real virtual world.
I think the OP was well written and informative and I think I agree to some extent even though I am a crafter at heart.
To me crafting has always been a way for me to be different in MMOs. I don't like raids and dungeon play because they tend to require people to select one predefined "best" build and role and then over learn that role to the point where they can play it blindfolded. The encounters never change. I like crafting systems which makes me pretty unique, in the sense I can make stuff that 99% of the players can't because I spent my time looking for rare resources dropping from rare mobs far away from where the raiders go.
Things I don't like:
-Raiders get to craft the best gear. Listen. They've already GOT the best EVERYTHING. Don't give them the best crafting too. Please.
-Everyone can craft everything. This ruins the economy. If player A wants item X, he crafts it himself. No trade.
-It's way to easy to master a craft. Raiders sometimes play 5 hours every day for months in order to get best raid gear. Why should crafting be easier? It should take a lifetime to become a grand master armorsmith.
I think crafting done well is a huge pluss to any MMO, but I agree with OP that there probably should be other things to do as well
Maybe it's time crafting was divorced from it's status as a secondary skill your just do on the side.
Mage, Fighter, Cleric are your class, but you are a soldier/adventurer by profession.
Why not break a game down by profession instead:
Soldier - pick class of soldier type
Crafter - pick class of crafting type
Mentor - pick class of training type
So soldier based players would be able to go out and fight things and protect areas.
Crafters would stay within certain distances of cities or would require soldiers to escort them to special crafting areas or new cities. You could only specialize in just one craft.
Mentors would devote their time to discovering and understanding lore - it would basically be a crafting class for abilities. So a wizard mentor would stay at the wizard's college experimenting with magical spells creating new magics for mage classed soldiers to use.
I'll take what I know. In SWG you had rare armor and weapon sub components that had much better stats than could ever be crafted (at one point there was a 100% protection on some composite gloves on a server) So looted sub components can make it easily accessible to make sure you want to go find that one in a million loot.
Community. When the crafters require stuff looted/harvested from monsters to make better items for you, the whole community is excited when the best spawned resource happens. It is simply fantastic. If it is done right, a game will have many awesome items for times to come, if it is a fast spawn the despawns in a day or so with low rates, cost went up as supply was down. SWG had some of the best overall community oriented players. Not saying other games don't (for instance the holiday event in TSW is being made extremely fun by the community calling out spawns) But when everything evolves around the community and not just combat it makes a more fun game.
I have yet to play an immersive game since SWG. No game I feel like I may miss something if I don't log in for a few days, other than the standard daily missions/weekly missions.
The other thing is most games no longer have awesome loot drop of random monsters. Its all about instanced gratification to where time=better character, not a random awesome world drop. Said that you can't find that awesome world drop anymore because hell we might enjoy something more than killing the same raid zone for hours on end.
The problem is many games don't do crafting right (Fallen Earth for example) to where everyone can create equally and nothing can be different. If there is no chance for differences, there is no room for customization and thus a market and thriving community. I could specialize in certain armors since I went after specific things, while other maybe a more wholesaler making just the biggest and strongest armor that doesn't equate to being the best for all situations, but overall the best.
You are looking at it wrong.
You state you fail to see the appeal to hunting and exploring in a crafting centered game.
However this is a crafting focused game, the appeal is not about hunting or exploring in itself.
The appeal is in crafting in the creation of things, exploring and hunting just give you the means to craft.
If you go into a crafting centric game looking for adventure, you are in the wrong game and will just be dissappointed.
In a crafting centric game all the classes work together. You love to hunt and explore, a crafter needs all those bones that you are looting and consider trash. He/she pays you handsomely while you are farming for X. X is the variable here because you aren't farming for that 2H mace but instead for a stack of dragon tissues to go into them.
It's all about changing your mindset because the systems aren't that different. Using the above bones and tissues, you have a chance to find a 1 in a million drop. To you it seems like junk but in the hands of the right crafter, it could become the most powerful weapon on the server. I remember in SWG there we're two guys who people feared in PvP because of the geo pistol and scythe blade they used.
It's all about flavor. When you know what you want, it's very exciting to see it drop after running through packs of elites or dragons. It's no different in a sandbox, however, you could farm for days and never get what you want. That is the main difference between the crafting centric games and loot focused games. You know the loot is going to drop and in other games you know where. I understand the randomization off D3 and other ARPGs but I think a few things are lost. But again, it's all about flavor. To loot materials and get a few crafting crits--amazing.
No one can convince you that crafting centric sandboxes are the way to go but they are more exciting, I think. You get the opporunity to make/have made an item that is very unique. You can give it it's own colors and name and change how it functions (damage, attack speed, accuracy, durability). In Diablo it's very possible for hundreds or thousands of players to share the same helm/weapon/chest/other equipment. In SWG it was very possible to have a weapon that no one else could ever get.
EDIT: The main point I wanted to make. In loot based games that is the fun of the games, finding the next best loot or best loot available. Parties are expendable, and sometimes the experiences that go along with them, because they are a means to an end. In the sandboxes it's apart of the system but it's not the game itself. Sure, you want to acquire better gear but you spend most of your time exploring, grouping and dying to krayt dragons, building camps and making online friends. The incentive to group is larger and the focus is on your interaction with the playerbase and less about gaining your N.Valor stacks. You get to enjoy the world. I loved GW2 but it's still not that true experience you get in a crafting centric sandbox.
The primary appeal of the crafting games is they tend to focus on community and the steps that go along with it. They are often more social and require you to interact to advance. You can still go solo and experience and fun and expansive world but those games feel empty alone.
You mean like in SWG... what goes around...