Challenges with the crafting ecosystem

Marzzo

Crafting has often been an irrelevant system from a progression POV in many MMO:s. It has often also been boring. This is a shame since a great MMO need a great crafting system. A system where crafted items can rival random drops and quest rewards from around the game.

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The first challenge for a healthy crafting ecosystem is to make people actually bother with it. For people to care, crafting needs to be relevant during all stages of the game. Random quest rewards and drops should not outclass almost all crafted items, weather it is during early, mid or endgame.

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The second challenge is for crafters to have access to a steady flow of supplies that are price competitive. For this there needs to be a lot of supply and demand. The first point cowers demand but supply is a bit trickier. For people to bother with gathering and refining there needs to be enough incentive for people to pick these professions and actually spend time gathering and refining stuff during all stages of the game.

Good incentives could be unique quests that are designed for refiners/gatherers or competitive gold/xp rewards from farming the materials needed by the crafters. The first point makes gold farming by gathering competitive if it is done right.

Another interesting incentive is one IS has already denied but could use more thought. Gathering professions and refining could give small or fun buffs to players. For example, a woodcutter would become a lot stronger than a herbalist. This could mean that the woodcutter gets a small strength buff. These buffs would make every single player interested in picking at least one profession which is great for the health of the ecosystem.

Alternatively, some professions could give small fun abilities. For example, the ability for a herbalist to transform into a cactus or “The amount of times you had to squat down to pick up herbs has given you the ability to jump high once every 5 minutes”

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One interesting thing is where gathered materials comes from. Instead of a dragon or monster randomly carrying equipment certain bosses could drop specific farming materials. For example, killing “Butter Dragon” could make him drop “Tooth of Butter Dragon” or be skinned for “Scale of Butter Dragon” which in turn could be used to craft great end-game gear by dedicated crafters. This would make many players seek out crafters to work with their gathered materials.

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Crafting progression is also something that is half done in many games. There should be different rarities or quality to fishing rods, mining picks, skinning knives etc. For example, “Tooth of Butter Dragon” could be used to create a high quality skinning knife that in turn opens up new rare and exciting skinning possibilities.

There could also be some for of crafting guild or NPC-hub with reputation tied to it. Higher reputation would unlock new recipes, rewards and cosmetics.

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But the most important factor by far is that many, many people decide to join in the ecosystem. We need tons of crafters, refiners and gatherers for the system to be fun and healthy. And the only way to get many players is to make it relevant and fun. Do not put this on second priority. It is vital for the game.

Damokles

Here is what we know about crafting and the "ecosystem":
1. Gear will have a maximum duration. You will be able to rapair equipment, but they will loose overall durability, which correspomds with the rarity of items i believe. Only legendary equipment will be indestructible. This leads to a constant need for equipment and the need to constantly/regularly switch out your gear, which is a hassle for pve/pvp players but a good thing for crafting professions.

2. Auctionhouses will be something that ONLY mercantile nodes and the nodes in their zoi will have!

3. The best crafting stations will most of the time be in scientific nodes, which will mean that people will most of the time buy there, then transport them with a caravan to the next biggest mercantile node.

4. Mobs in general wont drop gear most of the time. A wolf is supposed to drop pelts, meat and fangs or bones. A dragon will drop the same equivalent in its case, and then harvest specialists will be able to harvest it for even more or better loot. They also said i believe that bosses aill still drop gear or such things, but think of it that around 30-40% of the best gear is supposed to be crafted by the crafting professions.

5. I do have founded a specialised crafting guild with the main focus on procuring materials from raids/ the open world and the production of high end armour, weapons and trinkets. (Sadly we only have 2 people in the guild currently, we dont seem to have many interested people)

6. We dont know how the recipes will end up in the game, because it is always easy for developers to tell us vague facts, but not to tell us the real deal.

7. We know that materials are supposed to have different qualities.

8. Crafters are supposed to choose, what gear will recieve different stats, which is awesome.



Everything i said is mostlikely in constant change, and they somehow dont want to answere my infrequent questions about crafting.