Integrating crafting/tradeskills into MMPORPGs

ReverendDan

It looks as though the new generation have completely missed out on this beyond sticking to the tried and tested "hey, you can gather materials and make stuff to sell to other players!" (if I'm wrong, please tell me!)

"What are you talking about?" I hear you cry. Or maybe that's just the voices in my head.

Example: there is an ancient city buried deep beneath the mountains on the northern border of your kingdom. The operative word being buried. Blacksmiths are needed to make tools, miners are needed to excavate the site, hunter/cooks are needed to supply the operation with food, along with your more standard hero types who are needed to protect everyone from the rival group attempting to reach the city first, and also from the unspeakable evil you're unwittingly about to release because you didn't bother to bring a scholar capable of reading the blatant warnings written on all the walls.

Example: builders, in addition to making houses, etc. are suddenly vital as the monsoon season has come and the low-lying villages need flood defences constructing immediately or they will be lost. They are also handy to have along with your army as they can determine where to point your siege engines to inflict maximum damage on the walls of the enemy citadel.

There should be quests/missions/situations that require or benefit from the presence of people with tradeskills, like those outlined above, not just limited to "gather these rare things to make this special item"!

"Living rooms of America!! Do you catch my drift?? Do. You. Dig???"-The Tick

fulmanfu

its going to take something alittle more interesting to get me into tradeskills again.

back in the day, i had a master armorsmith and a master spellcrafter on DaoC, and when i broke down the time it took me to get there, i realized that me, my brother, my dad and my uncle built my house in less hours that it took to get to master. interesting if you think about that.

i would like to see something implemented where a little skill/fun goes into play, something like 'puzzle pirates' sailing/bilging/swordfight puzzles way implemented to tradeskills would be cool. and other reasons to have the skills, like you suggest, would be nice as well.

Homeslice513

I am really hoping EQ 2 has something along these lines. They seem to have a whole different look into their world and I think this will truly be a next generation MMORPG and if I am wrong then I will go on to the next

I am a total crafter/socializer in MMORPGs and would love to have something new.

SWG does have a mission now that you need to bring artisans with you so they can use the crafting stations (forges) that are there to create a rare armor (Mandalorian armor like Boba Fett wears).

Shagsbeard

I played a full time crafter on the largest server in DAoC.  I had well over 100 days played as a crafter.  I really enjoyed it.  The main thing that was great about DAoC crafting is that people didn't want to do it themselves.  It was tedious and boring for most people.  That dynamic created a role to play.  As soon as crafting became necessary (when SC/Alch came out) crafters popped out of the woodwork (pun intended) and it no longer was a role to play.  Pretty much everyone had a crafter or a friend who would knock something off for them.

The key to making a working economy is to make it worthwhile to have someone else do something for you.  That's really hard to do, since if it's worthwhile and fun, you might as well do it yourself.  Historically in England this was pretty much the same problem they had, and they solved it with what became the guild system.  It was illeagal to make stuff unless you had a guild charter.  You couldn't make shoes unless you were permitted to.  It was a completely controlled economy.  It lasted far far longer than our current free market model has.

A game could make us compete economically for the right to craft.  If someone didn't serve the demand, the right to practice the trade would be revoked.  You could remove the tedium, and the skilling portion of the process entirely, and just make it guild status that would determine who could make what.  The number of crafters could be adjusted to meet demand, never resulting in a saturated market.

Oakstead

Crafting should be fun in both EQ II & Dark and Light (DnL) since they treat crafting as a fight (I suspect DnL stole this idea from EQ2 since it was posted in one of their a dev chats in mid 2003). From an EQ II interview:

Quote "We have designed our crafting system to be unique and challenging; success is dependent upon more than just a roll of the dice. We make the skill of the player count.  Crafting items in our game is not just a matter of buying some components and making uber loot out of them. At the most basic level of the game, artisans will gather or buy components and make simple items that can be sold to players. However, the more desirable the item will be, the more intricate the process is to create it.  The crafting process is based upon our combat model. When you make an item, you are essentially entering an encounter with the crafting device (oven, forge, etc.). Artisans will be presented with challenges that they must overcome during the process, and they will have access to trade skill arts that are very much akin to the combat arts which adventurers use in battle" http://clanwhitestorm.com/eq2info/index.htm

WoW will be the same old boring crafting. They don't even have consigners or persisent markets to sell items like DnL and EQ II.

From Shagsbeard,

 quote: "The key to making a working economy is to make it worthwhile to have someone else do something for you.  That's really hard to do, since if it's worthwhile and fun, you might as well do it yourself."

This is so true! Unforunately EQ II allows all characters to become crafters with no limit on skills. In contrast DnL has some sort of skill normalization system. While you can "purchase" skills with skill points this simply defines the maximum potential of the skill. The actual skill level depends on how much that skill is used relative to others. So one cannot be both a master crafter and a master fighter (or a master explorer). If the demand isn't there for a certain type of crafting those types of crafters will be rare because that type of crafting will not occur.

Crafters will do more than craft items in DnL. They also will have to be used to build improvements to the fortresses and perhaps even build (and rebuild after destruction) structures in newly settled towns. Why wait for NPC content when players themselves can add the content.

Shagsbeard

This idea of making your character chose between professions has absolutely no effect.  People just roll alts to do their crafting.  Crafting becomes a chore relagated to bots, since if you max crafting, you gimp your character as an adventurer.  They really can't make crafting "fun" and have it be successful.  The real fun in crafting comes from the fact that you are helping others achieve... not that you made a nifty item.  I came to see crafting for a customer like buffing them, with a long duration buff spell that took me most of the day to cast.

Umbrood

You realise you 100% described Horizons in yer example?

Oakstead

From Shagsbeard, quote: "This idea of making your character chose between professions has absolutely no effect.  People just roll alts to do their crafting."

Ahh, that is true. So do you have any ideas on how to promote market interaction between players besides making it easy to buy and sell in a persistent market (this is better than a consigner since buyers can put up a bid price for the items they want to buy)

From Shagsbeard, quote: "Crafting becomes a chore relagated to bots, since if you max crafting, you gimp your character as an adventurer.  They really can't make crafting "fun" and have it be successful"

I was hoping my previous quote from EQ II was showing that crafting could be fun, as fun as combat anyway. Like combat, the Dark and Light and EQ II crafting will have certain special crafting "attacks" and "combos" depending on the type of skill the crafter has. In combat one usually has to manage mana and health. In this sort of crafting the crafter will have to follow other sorts of real time parameters instead of health such as temperature or mix percentage and then manage his own mana for these special crafting "attacks". The Dark and Light devs have even mentioned that certain special items will require grouping by different types of crafters just as taking out a boss MOB requires grouping by different types of fighters. The resulting quality of the item depends on how skilled the crafter is in doing this. In short crafting will require real player skill, not just character skill level statistics.

ReverendDan

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Originally posted by Umbrood
You realise you 100% described Horizons in yer example?

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Cool. Nice to know one out of the dozen or so MMPORPG's out there does it. With regards to the other comments, I guess I'm not so much after making the act of crafting fun (I mean, how much fun is it hammering out sheet steel in real life?) as giving it a context beyond being a trader/manufacturer.

I doubt there are many microbiologists that get their jollies out of squinting down microscopes at blobs and poking them with very fine needles - it's the application of what they're doing that provides the interest and motivation. For me there needs to be more reason to craft than to produce things to sell to people. If there's a high level of customisation inherent within a game's crafting system then it might be ok, as then you can get into "taking pride in your work" territory, but if not then it really holds no interest for me.

As said by Shagsbeard before me, part of the problem is the games often don't seem to allow for hybrid crafters/adventurers. A (maybe bad) example would be Indiana Jones, who combines scholarly abilities (well, sort of...) with the physical abilities of an explorer-type hero. Lets face it - it would be nice to be able to play an Indy clone in an MMPORPG. To give a more relevant example you might expect a blacksmith to be able to double up as a fairly tough warrior (perhaps so long as he was given a hammer to wield)