Crafting: Make love or bore?

[Dog Pants]

I've just read an interesting article on RPS, the crux of which is that crafting in games is unimaginitive and generally brings nothing to a game.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07 ... ting-crap/

I've had this thought myself. I've pretty much given up on crafting in Warcraft - my main doesn't bother, my alts just take gathering skills. It's a treadmill with very little purpose, and it's terribly dull. It doesn't have to be that way though. I remember playing an old German indie game called Stranded, which saw you shipwrecked on an island and trying to survive. The crafting wasn't fantastic, you gathered sufficient quantities of materiel and it would let you drop a well or a shelter, but it was compelling because there was a clear progression. Minecraft does that too, as does Don't Starve. Even they are reduced to collecting a quantity of things and clicking a button though. Surely there must be a better way. Anyone have any good/bad examples?

[Joose]

For me the biggest problem with crafting in MMOs is that there is generally quite poor return on investment, time wise. It tends to only give you better gear than you would get as quest rewards or loot at the highest of high levels, and to get there you have to put in hours and hours of using a boring interface to produce shit gear. Or I could spend that same amount of time actually playing the game and end up with high end gear that is pretty much just as good at the end of it.

Guild Wars 2 had a slightly more interesting crafting system than most, in that you had a "discovery" system. Instead of just going to a trainer and buying recipes, you banged random ingredients together to see what came out. Saying that, it was still a pretty shit system, which had me creating endless amounts of mostly sub-par gear in an effort to level up my crafting skill.

I think something that might work well would be some kind of minigame system, where your skill at completing the simple game influences the end result. Imagine playing a game of hexcells, and then a sword pops out with better stats for quicker times, and maybe negative effects for mistakes. It could still be somewhat linked to your level, so you don't get endgame gear at first level just because you have a quick mind for puzzles, but should still be good enough that an average player can get something better than regular looted/purchased/rewarded gear if they push themselves. You could have different kinds of minigames for different crafting skills: Puzzle games for blacksmithing, platform games for tailoring, rhythm games for enchanting or something like that. It would mean making each individual thing would take you longer, but it would also mean you don't sit there spamming out 3000 iron daggers because you want to be able to make a neat sword at some point.

It would make being a craftsman in an MMO a little more like being a real craftsman too. Regular swords made be people who are just OK at the minigame would go for regular prices on the marketplace, but a genuine "Dog Pants" Sword, made by Pants himself, the best sudoku player in the game, would go for a fortune and cause excitement in the in game chat when it hits the auction houses.

Obviously, it would need fairly decent checks to make sure people are not cheating the game somehow, but I think that is as doable as any other anti-haxxing measures that MMOs have to employ. It would certainly be a bumsight better than any of the current MMO crafting systems I can think of.

[Dog Pants]

a genuine "Dog Pants" Sword

I had to mentally check that this wasn't the result of a word felcher.

I've just realised that I've previously had a different opinion on this too, mostly borne from D&D 3rd ed - why bother crafting at all? People who are good enough to be able to craft the high level stuff a mighty hero would want to use will have dedicated their lives to their trade, not picked it up at night school between slaying orcs. Even though I like the idea of being able to create cool gear, it just seems so out of place when I think about it. The only reason I think MMOs have got away with it is because it's another number to make bigger.

[Roman Totale]

I've decided that all crafting can get to fuck - I'm really struggling to think of a game where it ended up being worthwhile. Only one I can think of is Morrowind where you could give yourself some incredibly powerful enchantments through soul gem trapping. Generally it's grindy and tedious as balls with no real benefit.

Wow has irked me for the last time with this. I've rarely bothered with actual crafting as it was too much effort, but I finally got my Tailoring to max level on one character, made some top gear and it stuck it on the Auction House (worth noting at this point that crafted gear was best in the game). What happened next? They opened up a new area where the random trash mob drops blow absolutely everything else out of the water. I'm sure at some point soon they'll bring more crafting stuff in, but again it will just be a tedious slog to make it worthwhile.

[Dog Pants]

They opened up a new area where the random trash mob drops blow absolutely everything else out of the water.

I spaffed 5000 crystal thingies on some gloves, only to immediately have the same ones drop from a mob.

[friznit]

/delurk

In most MMOs, typically it's a dreadful grindfest with no real value due to the need to balance it against everything that comes from drops. I feel compelled to point out, however, that our dearly beloved spreadsheet inclined game set in the vastness of the cosmos was in fact almost entirely driven by player crafted items, barring the occasional very rare, highly prized - and highly priced - "officer" drops. This was a game where crafting had a purpose, albeit the skills could be learnt by anyone and it was mechanically still a process of putting things in can and pressing buttons to produce other things.

Crafting starts to make a bit more sense In the MOs with less M, specifically the flurry of zombie (or dinosaur) survival games. 7 Days to Die has a nice balance of finding drops (gun parts, skillbooks and blueprints) and crafting them into something useful. You can strip the guns or break down tools into parts again to rebuild them to better quality. At the moment, quality of crafted items is predicated on your level (which comes from killing things) but I always thought it would be better to base it on the amount you craft, allowing individuals to specialise. As an aside, with most survival games like this, PvP quickly turns into a trollfest because individual players have no intrinsic value. If you could specialise and become the master craftsmen of "The Dog Pants Sword of Unwieldly Plus Fours", other players may be less inclined to kill you on sight. Maybe.

I watched the video of alchemy in Thy Kingdom Come with interest. It seems to have a less Press Button Receive Bacon approach to crafting which I look forward to seeing in detail.

[buzzmong]

On the mention of Spreadsheets in Space, that worked well because there was only 8 (?) raw materials you needed to make the vast majority of stuff, which you then used/sold/bought more/other materials/items to make other stuff. It was all chained, plus it was all fairly hands off. No real fucking about in crafting screens dragging and dropping and clicking craft hundreds of times. The factory system is a great idea as it meant you could do something else while the act of crafting was happening.

That, and you didn't have to slay 500 badgers to collect 150 badgers arses.

I vaguely remember that some of the crafting in pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies worked in a similar way, with basic materials giving way to base products, which were then used to build more things, and having trading inbetween the layers. I could be wrong as that's going back a long time.

[Dog Pants]

That, and you didn't have to slay 500 badgers to collect 150 badgers arses.

Easy. You could do that with one well-placed gate camp in low-sec.

[buzzmong]

[Joose]

The factory system is a great idea as it meant you could do something else while the act of crafting was happening.

My first thought here was "true, but it would be hard to insert this kind of system into a fantasy setting". Then I realised I was being a muppet, and actually you could use this to both make crafting less of a chore *and* fix the issue of it being a bit strange that your world conquering hero stitches his own pants: Offload the crafting onto a secondary character. Instead of going to town, going to the blacksmith and hammering things yourself, you could go to the town and speak to your mate, Blacksmith Bob. Give him all the raw materials and say "1000 daggers, please". Bugger off and return when Bob sends you a "Finished!" message. You could even make it so the Blacksmith/Cook/Tailor/Whatever is a character you have actually made yourself. Basically, change the MMO from being a single character per player game into a more traditional RPG "party" based game, except all but your main character are non-combatants. You could even have special loot to equip your crafting characters with, like prized dwarven smithing hammers or an enchanted leather apron.

It would make even more sense if you then have player owned buildings, like the barracks thing WoW has introduced.

[Dog Pants]

You can have your minions crafting for you in Warcraft. I've not tried it but I think it just spits out random crafted objects. It's close to what you say though, and I've always liked the idea of having a retinue.

[shot2bits]

I like the idea of alts as crafting dudes, although i am quite surprised its not been tried already thinking about it.

Ive always thought a more tactile approach to crafting might help, something where you actually have to put things together and some abstract game logic looks at the properties and the way you put the things together and it decides what it should be from that so it feels like you are actually making something purposefully bit by bit, although Ive never been able to think of a practical and intuitive way for a proper crafting system to be built off it rather than just a rough idea.

[Anery]

There should be a way to make crafting a valid way to level and produce money like SW:G
Shopkeeper/merhcant/artisan should be a valid progression path.