If You Were in Charge of Crafting in an MMO How Would You Design It?

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klemmbob

I thought Star Wars Galaxies crafting system was pretty much perfect

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noodles6966

The crafting system in FFXIV I think is done really well. Its set up as a mini game sorta,but you have different skills you can apply to make it more interesting and easier to craft a HQ item. Plus you have cross class skills you can use from other crafting jobs you have leveled up. There are even tools and special crafting gear that enhance the experience. Most games now,you look on the crafting menu and see what materials you have to craft something,hit a craft button and watch a bar fill up. Not exactly ingenious. rather boring to be honest. In FFXIV, by far they have the most interesting crafting mechanic in MMOs as of right now.

sunandshadow

The best crafting system is the one where the player focuses on crafting buildings, appliances, clothing, and pets for themself, not for sale.  Additionally, the best crafting (and gathering) system is the one where the player plays various minigames to accomplish most crafting, instead of waiting or having a random chance of failure.

aleos

Something like this


Item________________________________Item
|____Components                       =                        |____Weight                              
            |____Sub components               =                         |_____Attributes
                         |____Materials                         =                             |____ Color

Alcuin

Whatever the item creation process is, I'd add item wear.  Needing to renew/refresh/fix items would inject sustainability and purpose into a crafting system.

syriinx

SWG gathering
SWG economy
Some kind of VG or FFXIV style item making process

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Aeander

I'd make it less about quantity and progression crafting and more about questing and obtaining unique items.

* Find unique hilts, blades, runes, elements, spirits, and other such components in far-off caves or at the end of raids. Put these things together to make and name your own weapon, with a unique combination of appearances, particle effects, and modifiers. 

* Create gear with unique (but not superior) stats and abilities that can't be obtained elsewhere.

* Create customizable banners, capes, and other cosmetic objects for yourself and your guild.

linadragon

sunandshadow said:

The best crafting system is the one where the player focuses on crafting buildings, appliances, clothing, and pets for themself, not for sale.  Additionally, the best crafting (and gathering) system is the one where the player plays various minigames to accomplish most crafting, instead of waiting or having a random chance of failure.

No.. just no. The best crafting system is a system where people can actually focus on being crafters and trading their wares. A system like SWG where there is an interdependence and not a whole "you are everything you need to be". The problem now is that crafting and gathering are put in as after thoughts to the entire combat focused games entirely. You can't make your way and actually play someone that crafts and skip the other content because you will be utterly useless after point X. 

Crafting needs to be the way to attain the best gear period. Maybe components for that gear come from raids and with interdependence crafters are able to buy that stuff and make that great gear etc. There is literally no reason to craft at this point in most mmorpgs. 

The mini games I can agree on though

H0urg1ass

I've got an MMO that I would love to make stored away in my head with damn near every part of the game fleshed out.  However, putting it to paper here would take about 10 pages of typing.

However, the game would essentially be based on GURPS rules, in a REH-similar Low Fantasy setting, with a modified action-reaction style combat system found in the Batman/Madmax games,  player built economy, non-preventable item decay, an enormous and dangerous open world that becomes exponentially more dangerous the further away from civilization that the player travels.  

Open world PVP with a modified dueling ability.  If you want to fight another player, then you put on your duel flag and freely PVP.   If you don't want to fight, well you can still be killed, but anyone killing you suffers from drastically reduced build point gain and HP regen due to "bad karma" for committing murder.

cameltosis

Crafting is only worthwhile if crafting is the primary way to obtain new gear. 

If most gear is gained from loot, then the economy becomes mostly pointless and thus most crafting becomes pointless. So, make crafted gear the best and main way to get gear and also make gear degrade over time, forcing the economy to remain healthy and active over time. Basically, SWG. 

Beyond that, I'm not really a crafter myself so don't have preferences. SWG was very good in a lot of respects but most of my positive memories of it are from a buyers perspective. When I tried crafting myself, I seem to remember the vast majority of my time was spent surveying for resources, travelling to my harvesters to collect resources and then sitting at a bench endlessly clicking as my macro ran and I tried to level up. Not particularly fun. 

Akulas

Each item requiring components from another craft and materials having varying quality and definately have durability so crafters can stay in business and rely on each other. 

Manestream

Never played SWG, but Everquest 2's crafting system was faily nicely done (when it released) i believe they have nerfed the hell out of it now to the point of it being crap however.

Antiquated

Will a sound effect suffice?

*flush*

SIRKRA

EQ2

Steelhelm

A tall order, but I'm thinking about a robust system of interaction between players where nothing is wasted. A sandbox element where there's always a market for everything a character crafts. The most simplest or easiest reason to implement crafting and to craft would probably be crafting adventuring gear for players that explore the open world or crafting stuff for housing.

kjempff

EQ2 crafting as it were at launch (which is different from now), with some twists..
- More components from (rare) mob drops
- More emphasis on crafting quality meaning better stats, including subcomponents. So a perfectly crafted piece of gear is rare and valuable.
- Group crafting (different professions must cooperate in real time working on one piece)
- Occasion crafting (ex: can only craft Sword of the moon on midnight at full moon)
- Location crafting (ex: only the forges of the aggressive dark dwarves burn hot enough to make [whatever])

- Crafter - Adventurer symbiosis, both should need eachother. ex: crafters need adventurers to fight down to the dark dwarves forges, or drops from the world... adventurers need repairs and invaluable consumables like ropes, torches, lockpicks, food, spell components, herbs (healing spell components), transport of loot (both equipment and transporting services)... and more.

- And ofcourse real sandbox crafting of buildings and guild houses.. which will give crafters and adventurers alike bonuses (ex: building a house with a quality forge gives quality bonus to crafted items... adventurers living in a quality building gain bonuses in combat, endurance etc. Goes without saying a building is not just a building, they come in varying quality and difficulty to create.

huntersam

i  started on the seg crafting system but then i did enjoy the vanguard soh system far more

funcon

The mmo's I have played are WoW, SWTOR, LotRO, ESO and probably some others I can't think of right now. The one crafting system I like the most is ESO. 

gipfeli

DMKano said:

I wouldn't. 

I am not a designer so not going to pretend. 


If you were in charge of a nuclear power plant, how would you design it?

Same thing, except many are under the delusion that because they play games they have the design skills.

Also you don't even have the basic reqs here.

The obvious missing piece is what is the rest of the game like?

You cant design a system in a vacuum, it has to fit the rest of the game - example putting in SWG crafting in League of Legends would be a a huge failure.

hey!
that would make me play league of legends... for real

Amathe

Another vote for SWG crafting. But with EQ2 guild materials stations. 

esc-joconnor

For the Sci-Fi game I'm designing I've thought of the basics of the crafting system, but haven't gone into great depth yet.
As it's Sci-Fi there won't be a lot of real "crafting". There will be fabricators that can be programmed create whatever plans it has access to.
What there will be is research/design and modification/repair.

Modification/repair will work the most like crafting, requiring tools, skills and components to improve equipment. It's a bit of a dark future, largely corp controlled, so a lot of the commercially available products will be low quality, but any piece might have a good component or two. You could always make a plan to mass produce your new creation in a fabricator, but the components will be copy-written, and legal fabricators won't allow you to do that. Illegal fabricators on the other hand . . . not easy to come by though.

Research/Design will be fooling around with sub components, materials and new breakthroughs to make better components. It will be a mini game that allows you to rotate sub component connections together with varying results, better equipment allow more precision and granularity. And one you have you better component you can copy-write it, and reap any profits. 

All the data involved above can of course be stolen (hackers) used on illegal systems, illegal items can be identified, and research into alien tech can provide new technologies and materials.

It will likely be tricky to get a good balance but I'm sure a sweet spot can be found!

Thinking about it, some kind of simple simple makeshift weapon creation system might be a good addition as well.

rodarin

Only one thing has to be done with crafting in 99% of the systems out there, make the FINISHED product worth more than the sum of all the parts.

CrazKanuk

I'd really like to see more randomness. Random attributes, level of attributes (number of points), weapon grade, etc. Maybe this is based on the amount that you have crafted, or even crafted of a particular item. So if I make a million Silver Axes, maybe I start out making plenty of common ones, then as I make more and more, I start producing rare, epic, legendary ones at a higher rate.

I guess it's about creating greater viability of crafting in MMOs.