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Any MMOs with interesting crafting mechanisms?

AzrileAzrile Member Posts: 2,582

Games vary in how important crafting is. .  ranging from WOW where crafting is an afterthought, to games like early UO or SW where crafting was a big part of the economy.

The problem is, in all those cases, you basically pressed a button and instantly had the item.  There was no ´game´ to actually crafting the item.

Are there any games that have any type of mini-game aspect to crafting?

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Comments

  • Mors.MagneMors.Magne Member UncommonPosts: 1,549

    Darkfall Unholy Wars as reasonably good crafting. The 'mini game' aspect would be the collection of materials without getting killed and totally looted by another player.

     

    However, this game comes with 2 big caveats:

     

    1) You've got to like teaming up for PvP - everything in this game is ultimately directed towards this. 

    2) You have to pony up the money up front. Therefore, you could look at gameplay videos on YouTube to see if it's your thing. It isn't most peoples thing!

  • syriinxsyriinx Member UncommonPosts: 1,383
    Originally posted by Azrile

    Games vary in how important crafting is. .  ranging from WOW where crafting is an afterthought, to games like early UO or SW where crafting was a big part of the economy.

    The problem is, in all those cases, you basically pressed a button and instantly had the item.  There was no ´game´ to actually crafting the item.

    Are there any games that have any type of mini-game aspect to crafting?

    FFXIV mechanic is actually pretty good until you get maxed out and it becomes more of a rotation.  Crafting impact on economy is minor

    ArcheAge has putrid crafting (click/combine/nofail/random proc) but the gathering is difficult and the material lists get complex, and crafters should drive the economy

     

    Nothing remotely comparable to SWG on the market.

  • AzrileAzrile Member Posts: 2,582

    Thanks,  Yeah, I have played a ton of MMOs and I really can´t remember any that have any type of mini-game related to crafting.

    The challenge is always in getting the mats, or having the recipe or skill to make the item.  Once that is done, you just click a button and get the item...

     

    What I am thinking about is like an entire UI where you have to react to ingame cues as you forge the sword or something like that.  Maybe react to low heat, or a weak spot.  I don´t know.

  • dreamscaperdreamscaper Member UncommonPosts: 1,592

    Everquest 2 has a really interesting crafting system. It's probably my favorite crafting in MMORPGs currently.

    <3

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347

    A Tale in the Desert is the best at it, and if you think you like crafting, you really have to try ATITD for a while to get a good view of what can be and has been done.  Puzzle Pirates and FFXIV manage to make the crafting process interesting, too.

    But be warned that ATITD doesn't really have anything besides crafting, and combat in FFXIV is flagrantly bad.

  • BenediktBenedikt Member UncommonPosts: 1,406
    Originally posted by dreamscaper

    Everquest 2 has a really interesting crafting system. It's probably my favorite crafting in MMORPGs currently.

    sorry but no it has not

    it was interesting when it was released, before they nerfed it, because then to get to the max quality was hard and failing to counter the event often lead to char dying. today when you have at least a bit idea what to do, it is no problem to never fail, always get to max quality and usually end up with max durability.

    FFXIV (and Vanguard before that) are my favorites as far as the crafting process goes.

  • RekindleRekindle Member UncommonPosts: 1,206
    you're talking about eq2's reactionary crafting system
  • bcbullybcbully Member EpicPosts: 11,838
    Age of Wushu has about 17 professions, all with mini games plus no two items have the same stats. Pretty cool system.
    "We see fundamentals and we ape in"
  • olepiolepi Member EpicPosts: 2,814

    Vanguard has/had a mini-game for crafting.

    Ryzom has interesting crafting, there are no fixed recipes. Each item can be made in a lot of different ways, and players develop their own favorite recipes using mats they know how to get. Once you have the mats, however, there is no mini-game to make the item.

    ------------
    2024: 47 years on the Net.


  • DibdabsDibdabs Member RarePosts: 3,203
    I've played many, many MMOs and not a single one has had a crafting mechanism that interested me in the slightest.  I seriously doubt I'll ever play one that does.
  • TalonsinTalonsin Member EpicPosts: 3,619
    I miss real crafting in games.  UO was a great start but SWG had amazing crafting.  I have not found anything to compare to the crafting/resource gathering in SWG and I doubt I ever will. 
    "Sean (Murray) saying MP will be in the game is not remotely close to evidence that at the point of purchase people thought there was MP in the game."  - SEANMCAD

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,347
    Originally posted by olepi

    Vanguard has/had a mini-game for crafting.

    While Vanguard had a mini-game for crafting, every profession used exactly the same mini-game, and it wasn't a terribly deep one, either.  Crafting outcomes mostly depended on your crafting level and gear and the level of what you wanted to craft, more so than what you actually did in the mini-game unless you were flagrantly stupid about it.  It was also really grindy.  So like so many other things in that game, they tried to make something good, but didn't really succeed.

  • Ket_VilianoKet_Viliano Member UncommonPosts: 271
    Originally posted by Mors.Magne

    Darkfall Unholy Wars as reasonably good crafting. The 'mini game' aspect would be the collection of materials without getting killed and totally looted by another player.

     

    However, this game comes with 2 big caveats:

     

    1) You've got to like teaming up for PvP - everything in this game is ultimately directed towards this. 

    2) You have to pony up the money up front. Therefore, you could look at gameplay videos on YouTube to see if it's your thing. It isn't most peoples thing!

    DFO's best crafting was Enchantment, where you had q1 to q5 mats, and different combos for different effects. Is Enchantment back in DFUW?

     

    I went back for the free weekend, but now my wolfman looks like a sad dog, instead of an owlcat. Still too demoralized to play.

  • FoomerangFoomerang Member UncommonPosts: 5,628

    As far as a new mmo with engaging crafting, ffxiv is among the better options. Crafting classes have about 20 useful abilities and a resource pool. You also have crafting gear with your own crafting stats. Same with gathering. Crafters make the best gear from 1-49 for combat classes and all the best gathering and crafting gear. Crafters make dyes, glamours for vanity clothing, furniture, rare pets, and some of the best weapons and armor you can get without doing top tier raids. Not to mention crafters are required for all materia melding.

    I exclusively craft and gather in this game and I am never bored. Despite what some people claim, the economy is a fun meta game in and of itself and I am constantly having to restock my retainers every day.

  • gideonvaldesgideonvaldes Member Posts: 148
    When it comes to crafting items, for me Rohan would be one of the best when it comes to that, however, as of this time, game became for pay2play game and temp. class are now over-powered,  nearly dead because of that =(.
  • gw2foolgw2fool Member UncommonPosts: 164
    Fallen Earth has a crafting system that requires you to craft items that you need to play rather than buying them.
  • ApraxisApraxis Member UncommonPosts: 1,518
  • OrgoneOrgone Member Posts: 90

    Everquest 2 crafting is a right grind, when the game was launched it was much more involved.

     

     

  • AzrileAzrile Member Posts: 2,582

    What we are thinking of doing is having two options for crafting.   Now keep in mind that crafting is necessary for gearing and will produce the best items.  Also items have durability and will need to be replaced frequently ( Appx 3 days of hard use).   With those goals in mind, we don´t want to have a system like UO where you can have 1000 ingots and knock out 100 swords in an hour.

    Our initial thinking is this..  two options

    1.  Offline crafting.    When players log off, there is a passive skill gain system a bit like EVE, however, you can assign it by hours.. say you study 1 thing for 3 hours, then another for 4 hours, then have a ´default´  third skill which is gained with any excess time.  These are generally ´book learning´ type skills, not active skills.   So instead of learning a passive knowledge skill, you could log off near a forge and anvil and add ´craft sword´ which takes 2 hours followed by your passive knowledge skills.

    2.  Active crafting.  this is where we are looking for ideas.  Generally we would like a basic sword to take about 20 minutes to craft ( 20 minutes of player interaction).  The difficulty is just making it fun.  many of the options talked about in this thread we have seen, but in the end, they are just not ´fun gameplay´.   At best they turn into ´whack-a-mole´ type minigames which really would suck if they lasted 20 minutes.

    An alternative to #2 we are toying with is what some other games have done, and that is just make the resource gathering the time-consuming, but fun part.  In my opinion, it is easier to make mining fun than to make blacksmithing fun (gameplay wise).  So to create that sword, you would need 20-30 minutes of mining ( which we would devote a lot of time to make it fun, and not just punching a cliff wall) and then when you log off, you would set ´create sword - 2 hours´ as one of your offline activitis.

     

  • JonrobinJonrobin Member UncommonPosts: 18
    I especially like the idea of possibly dying if you don't react to the game correctly within a given period of time.
  • RhinotonesRhinotones Member UncommonPosts: 250

    Hi Azrile,

    Some ideas for crafting a blade I've been working on.

     

    Bladesmith Skills Sets required:

    1. Smelting

    2. Forging/Tempering

    3. Balance

    4. Honing

     

    1. Smelting

    The higher your skill in smelting the more pure your metals will become. Less impurities will add strength, durability and hold an edge to a weapon longer.

     

    2. Forging/Tempering

    There are 2 aspects to this skill.

    Folding - How many times you will fold the metal will depend on the mix of your ores i.e. From practise you've discovered that using 20 Ingots of X with 4 Ingots of Y you should fold the mix 12 times for maximum alloy strength.

    Tempering - The heating and cooling of the alloy. How hot do you make your forge (and keeping the forge at that temp) and how long do you let he metal cool for when tempering?

     

    3. Balance

    How long and heavy do you make the 1. Blade and 2. pommel for best balance?

    A better balanced blade may allow you to either swing it quicker and/or more accurately.

     

    4. Honing

    What type of edge to put on a blade - Chisel grind, hollow grind, sabre grind etc?

    Different edges have different values in terms of how often they need to be sharpened and how much damage they can add i.e. an edge that is thin and very sharp will do more damage but hold an edge for far longer before you will need to rehone it.

     

    If you look at the possible variations attainable dependant on skills and choices made, an idea like this could provide many many hours of experimentation trying to find good combinations, whilst increasing your characters proficiency in each skill set.

    Whilst I like your idea on spending 20 minutes to create a weapon, I as a crafter would prefer a weapon to last longer. 

    What if the system was more time dependant to create a weapon (adding value to the weapon) and took longer to destroy? You could design it so that after applying each skill set there is a cool down period before commencing to the next phase of the crafting process.

     

    Just one of the many Ideas I'm putting together and onlt too happy to share.

    image
  • AzrileAzrile Member Posts: 2,582

    Thanks,  good information and ideas.

    The part we are battling right now is just the actual mechanism and how to make it fun.   that little flash game someone linked earlier was actually really interesting and I ended up playing for a good 30 minutes!

    Here is the thing.  As a designer, we can make the process complicated and involved, but that doesn´t necessarily make it fun or interesting to play.  Some of the engineer stuff in WOW, or the tinkering stuff in UO ( clocks).. they had a lot of steps, and a lot of intermediate products, but that just made it annoying on your inventory and memory. ´ok, I need 4 springs, 2 bases, 3 zongs, 2 zings..´  but in the end, putting the item together was not fun.

    The other problem is just ´the internet´..    Let´s use one of your examples where you can ´experiment´ to find the proper temperature while smelting to maximize the durability of your broadword.  My guess is that you wouldn´t even make it out of beta before someone had a spreadsheet posted somewhere showing all the optimized numbers.  Of course you could throw in some RNG so that every players had a unique sweet spot for their temperature... but that feels contrived.

    Another idea we have tossed around is to make armor pieces and weapon types very unique as far as skill gains and/or expertise.  So that way you could create exceptional quality broadswords, but that would not give you any advantage when making other things.

    As far as the comment about our durability plans.  Still in develpment.  but we are thinking that a basic iron sword of normal quality would last 3 days of hard use. and the same weapon would take about 30 minutes from start to finish to produce.  There are a few other rules that play into this, but really we want crafting to be nearly on equal footing as adventuring..  we don´t want weapons to be so easy to make, or last so long, that they have no value.     Also an experienced smith could improve the durability and quality (damage), and then using more advanced materials would further improve both quality and durability.  There would be overlap..  so like an exceptional iron sword would be slightly better than a low-quality steel sword.

    I really like your last part.  And that is what we are shooting for.  We want to get the smith involved in the process, and for the process to be fun... and then be rewarded for it.

  • RhinotonesRhinotones Member UncommonPosts: 250

    Cheers Azrile,

    I like your idea with durability in that it's life expectancy may be dependant on metals used and other contributing factors.

    I've seen numerous people questioning crafting mechanics within current games and begging for more diverse, involved and satisfying systems to be incorporated within MMO's. I agree that the mechinics needs to be enjoyable, but just as important is the need to feel rewarding. A crafter  loves that feeling of creating an item that's of a higher quality. An aspect of luck could be used where a % chance of crafting a higher quality item is incorporated.

    Good luck with your endeavour!

    image
  • syriinxsyriinx Member UncommonPosts: 1,383
    Originally posted by Orgone

    Everquest 2 crafting is a right grind, when the game was launched it was much more involved.

     

     

    Yeah I think EQ2s item making is more annoying than anything.

     

    Its nearly impossible to fail and just becomes tedious.  Its 1-2-3 over and over again with the occasional 4-5-6 thrown in.

     

    Where EQ2 shines is in its content for crafters.   Lots of crafting quests and even quests designed for groups of crafters.

  • gw2foolgw2fool Member UncommonPosts: 164

    Durability:

    So you spend over a year to gather the mats to build the ultimate weapon (or what ever), then three days later you have to throw it away and start gathering again.

     

    Another option is having to hone the worn out item to making it keep doing max damage etc. However do not make it like one system that I rage quit over. Were this ends up having you hone it every time your in town emptying your never enough room, backpack. Problem is every time you hone the item you halve its life. The game I played, I ended up having not enough money to buy another weapon and not having a weapon because I honed it too often.

     

    Produce a game with any of these features and I will not play, sorry!

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