There are quite a few things i find annoying about crafting.
First as the comic shows, the annoying " make a crap load of crap to get slightly better crap".
Second, taking days on end to make said crap to earn enough skill ups to make something that isnt crap at all (decent weapon,armor, etc).
Third, next expansion comes out that either
a) lets you obtain some kind of item that gives insane + stats to crafting or
b) lets you quest something that is 20 X better than that non crap item it took you weeks to work up the skill to have thus turning it back to the original crap that it once was completing the circle of crap.
Most of this experience was with Everquest, but I have seen it in otther games too.
Doing instance after instance praying for a chance to get a rare crafting component and then having to roll against 5 other people if it does drop, then possibly failing the combine even with a max stat tradeskill AAAaaarrrgggHHhhhH !!! Then going back and doing it again LOL. The only other option being paying some insane amount for 1 single rare compenent from the bazar,marketplace.
Out of 10.000 recepies vast majority isn't worth to make. LOTRO crafting is as boring as any other ol' crafting. Collect/buy hundreds of things, craft crap, rince and repeat.
Worst was Aion for me, with collect thousands of stuff, pay lots of monies to vendor and you'll have 20%~ to make improved thing...at the end it was ridiculous, 3 tiers which comes to cool 1% to craft your thing. Woooo.
Earth and beyond had a robust crafting system as well ( hmm also kinda sci fi , mere coincidence?)
pretty much crafting is only worthwhile is someone wants what u craft and is willing to reimburse at least the cost of what it took to make it.
in WOW it costs 300g to make something that sells for 30g (if it sells at all) not really a robust system.
EnB was robust, in a way. However, I don't remember any crafter-customization beyond stamping their name on items they crafted. I did like the way you needed to reverse-engineer items in order to build them and it wasn't guaranteed that you wouldn't fail a RE and destroy the item.
Ryzome has a pretty good resource gathering and crafting system.
I'm really big into crafting, but I agree that crafting sucks. There truly is no way to make crafting in and of itself...fun. It's unrealistic, and frankly a waste of development resources, to make crafting "fun".
But I don't craft because crafting is fun. I craft because of the economy. I craft for the complexity. I craft to manage a business of sorts. THAT is what's fun to me. Not the actual act of crafting 15 crappy swords to make the less crappy sword.
What crafting NEEDS to be successful is differentiation. That's why I hate wow "crafting". It's a commodity market. Everyone sells the same stuff, and lots of it. But good crafting will have a great economy behind it and allow the crafters to differentiate themselves from one another. That's what made SWG so great. Not the crafting system, but the economy.
Personally, I love crafting. When it has my name on it...dang
If it doesn't have my toon name on it though, its ok. I just like making stuff rather then quest rewards which becomes a point and click game. Crafting you gather materials and sit down and make something.
On the flip side though, I'm not all for WoW's makeup of making a million items to level up...a few items with a lot of materials are better in my mind then a million items requiring 4 materials to skill up.
Just my 2 cents.
Member of Talon | www.lakexeno.com RIFT: Redcameo, Warrior, Faemist Server RIFT: Bluecameo, Mage, Faemist Server
Comments
There are quite a few things i find annoying about crafting.
First as the comic shows, the annoying " make a crap load of crap to get slightly better crap".
Second, taking days on end to make said crap to earn enough skill ups to make something that isnt crap at all (decent weapon,armor, etc).
Third, next expansion comes out that either
a) lets you obtain some kind of item that gives insane + stats to crafting or
b) lets you quest something that is 20 X better than that non crap item it took you weeks to work up the skill to have thus turning it back to the original crap that it once was completing the circle of crap.
Most of this experience was with Everquest, but I have seen it in otther games too.
Doing instance after instance praying for a chance to get a rare crafting component and then having to roll against 5 other people if it does drop, then possibly failing the combine even with a max stat tradeskill AAAaaarrrgggHHhhhH !!! Then going back and doing it again LOL. The only other option being paying some insane amount for 1 single rare compenent from the bazar,marketplace.
Work hard Play Harder
Out of 10.000 recepies vast majority isn't worth to make. LOTRO crafting is as boring as any other ol' crafting. Collect/buy hundreds of things, craft crap, rince and repeat.
Worst was Aion for me, with collect thousands of stuff, pay lots of monies to vendor and you'll have 20%~ to make improved thing...at the end it was ridiculous, 3 tiers which comes to cool 1% to craft your thing. Woooo.
EnB was robust, in a way. However, I don't remember any crafter-customization beyond stamping their name on items they crafted. I did like the way you needed to reverse-engineer items in order to build them and it wasn't guaranteed that you wouldn't fail a RE and destroy the item.
Ryzome has a pretty good resource gathering and crafting system.
I'm really big into crafting, but I agree that crafting sucks. There truly is no way to make crafting in and of itself...fun. It's unrealistic, and frankly a waste of development resources, to make crafting "fun".
But I don't craft because crafting is fun. I craft because of the economy. I craft for the complexity. I craft to manage a business of sorts. THAT is what's fun to me. Not the actual act of crafting 15 crappy swords to make the less crappy sword.
What crafting NEEDS to be successful is differentiation. That's why I hate wow "crafting". It's a commodity market. Everyone sells the same stuff, and lots of it. But good crafting will have a great economy behind it and allow the crafters to differentiate themselves from one another. That's what made SWG so great. Not the crafting system, but the economy.
Personally, I love crafting. When it has my name on it...dang
If it doesn't have my toon name on it though, its ok. I just like making stuff rather then quest rewards which becomes a point and click game. Crafting you gather materials and sit down and make something.
On the flip side though, I'm not all for WoW's makeup of making a million items to level up...a few items with a lot of materials are better in my mind then a million items requiring 4 materials to skill up.
Just my 2 cents.
Member of Talon | www.lakexeno.com
RIFT: Redcameo, Warrior, Faemist Server
RIFT: Bluecameo, Mage, Faemist Server
[double posted]
Member of Talon | www.lakexeno.com
RIFT: Redcameo, Warrior, Faemist Server
RIFT: Bluecameo, Mage, Faemist Server