Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Crafting needs to have some sort of skill based mechanics and not merely waiting until an item is craft. Crating needs to be interactive, not a waiting simulator. A crafting independent skill tree, just like class tree that allows the artisan to specialize in their trade. Faster gathering vs gathering more. Potions lasting longer vs Potions given stronger buffs. Armor having more durability vs reducing more damage as for some examples.
A mini game based on skill will satisfy the artisan (Mostly for processing and crafting, gathering can go without it unless it's fishing or something that needs to be interactive.) , artisan professions could be for certain people and not aimed to cater for everyone; remember if everyone is special no one is. Just like not everyone will do raids; most people will not do PvP, so these professions shouldn't be for everyone as well.
You already have systems for soloplay, you do already have cosmetics. You could have a system for people who enjoy crafting and not for people who want to use crafting to gather cheaper gear and items. You could give value to these artisans and their art and trade.
Do not make crafting too easy, I repeat, do not make crafting something anyone can do or else it will become merely about the same in WoW.
This created interesting scenarios where you could offer your services up as a weaponsmith to anyone on the server. Just based on your reputation someone would hand you their baby girl/boy. Just kidding. They'd give you their main weapon! And the mats required to upgrade it. I never took anyone's weapon from them and only took tips, personally.
But imagine the wars that could be started over one greedy anvil boi
you have like 12 diffrent T1 Eq´s whit diffrent Stats.
You can update your T1 Gear into T2 , T2 into T3 ect.
FInaly you get a *weak* endgame part. After that you need special items / Gold to upgrade it more and more. to get it in slow steps into a good gear.
FF14 to me was the first time I saw a crafting system being done in a unique and completely different way that caught me off-guard. Adding a small mini-game like system that requires a bit of skill that influences how 'good' the crafted item is was to me very cool. That meant that not only did you just need to get the resources, you also needed to know how to best 'use' the tools to craft an item and it wasn't just a matter of 'Collect X-Y' in order to craft 'Item Z'. As everyone can collect a bunch of ore and smelt it down, but only a master blacksmith knows how to best utilize the metal with the right tools. (ESO did a decent job with its alchemy, having to experiment with different plants to see what effects they created)
When it comes to the ingredients, the resources that go into crafting I love it when high-end resources are only acquired in high-risk zones, (PvP or PvE). Do you want to make a highly potent healing potion that grants a small buff for a small period of time that could turn the tide of battle when taken correctly? Well, you must collect a rare moss that grows only in the cavern guarded by a world boss. This makes the 'epic' items, worth more value in the economy and makes adventures actively look out for highly valued ingredients that they know they could bring back because Gray the Alchemist will buy these in an instant.
Now FYI, this is just a random spur of words and more an example that I am trying to convey that having a crafting system that has meaning and validates crafters is what I am searching for. That having spent the time to become a Master-Crafter of profession X, is a feature of it's own.
I guess overall, it boils down to not just being a simple 'Click to craft' and being part of the core-system and not as an addition or worse.. Like WoW's crafting system.
Game's I enjoyed that had decent to good crafting systems would be;
FF14
ESO (Without the long timers, the timers felt a tad odd and more a time-gate than skill-gate)
Long story short;
- Skill based system (Nothing feels better than to explore find a secret way that makes the item better and then sell them. Trade secrets are great)
- Something like ESO's alchemy of exploring what ingredients do, how they react and finding a nice synergy
Choosing were you level due to your profession is quite nice. Going to places that are more efficient for a particular profession is another good reason for me to level alts. I get to experience new areas with while leveling the other professions that I want.
I mostly level crafting/gathering to make money in MMOs, but it would be nice if i could get relevant gear at the same time throughout the leveling process, an item that would stick with me for a few levels.
Crafting I would love to see in AoC is something I never experienced in an mmo actually. I want a crafting that:
- will leave a sense of accomplishment from a craft.
- Will have all professions have their individual domain instead of interchanging materials doing almost exactly the same with no sense of variety.
- Will have all professions feel meaningful and worthwhile to master, even if you can't make whole profession feel like that at least make few recipes that will have high periodical earnings like consumables that everyone would want to bring to a raid or a siege.
- Will have a stable progression of their craft but also a "above and beyond" option that would allow for high cost projects that might not even yield anything (which is a risk someone accepts when considering this option) but might craft something unique and valuable, allowing crafters to boast about something and feel cool for once.
- Will be able to customize crafted equipment while crafting, changing blades, shafts and hilts of weapons and pauldrons, breastplates and sleeves.
Crafting systems I experienced and did not enjoy:
-FFXIV - I think it is way too tedious. So tedious in fact that it is a common practice to just buy items that are required from you for quests instead of crafting them yourself. While actual crafting has sort of a "minigame" aspect it is mostly just based around overgearing targetted craft and using way less actions than needed until the very lategame.
- BDO - Small scale crafting was fine, I especially liked experimenting with cooking and finding out new recipes by adding random ingredients and seeing if your meal changed. However larger scale crafting was too muddled between nodes, delivery systems, timegating and multiple facilities required for simple construction of parts. Imo if you need a quarter of a town rented to assemble one carriage then we have a problem.
- World of Warcraft - Borderline useless crafting. When i stopped playing back in BfA no crafted gear was worth crafting because any raid gear was better than anything you could craft. Only thing that even had a wink at selling was potions and food with an occasional chance of enchants - so basically consumables. It does not feel satisfying to craft anything, takes near 0 effort past leveling professions which is just spam crafting one item and then switching to another one.
- Korean MMO's - RNG is the only way, I will be standing thank you.
I just wanted to leave my opinion here. I, and the crew I want to game with, are focusing almost entirely on crafting. We will do PvE to gather resources, or find recipies. The type of game you are promising makes us hopeful that crafting will be complicated, or very difficult. That we can log in and invest time and effort into something that we may not even use.
In many games crafting is important, but never have I found a game where I could make it my entire reason to play. Ultimately, my hopes are to roll my dwarf and spend many hours mining and crafting equipment to sell or trade to others.
I did like the idea of having crafted tools in your possession just not in your inventory that's like 4-6 items taking up space, they need to be equip able.
I hate to say it but New World's crafting system is interesting to say the least. You have like multiple gathering and crafting trees and it does seem rewarding. Out of all crafting systems i have used so far this by far is the best. Especially the fishing system. The game has one flaw, you cannot swim. I also love the fact that every tree bush or rock can be gathered and there are no sparkles, mainly because nothing in rl sparkles that has real value. I grade it 4-5, as its like the best thing New World has going for it.
Wow crafting is limited, you only can do certain things and every expansion those mats are useless. I did love that crafting had stat buffs but they took it away, as usual. It is a shame they have overhauled everything in the game except crafting and fishing in that game. I grade wow crafting at a 1-2 at best.
Lord of the rings Online is another game where you are limited to three crafting skills. Meaning you need alts to do the other things and you need the alts to do mostly crafting if you want all the mats to make things. I like the vastness of that crafting system with crafting guilds and all but it is pretty grindy. I never fished in lotro but i herd its like Warcraft where you just click the bobber no fun. I grade it 3-4.
Rift crafting was ok if i remember correctly. But i grade it 2-3.
Finial Fantasy online I did like the crafting system. It wasn't that bad to grind the levels and things were easily found or bought. I did like the way they had rng built into the making of stuff. By far the best fishing in any mmo of its time. I like having baits that can be gathered and made and rods of different attributes. and yes something than just clicking a bobber! I grade it 4-5.
BDO had a huge crafting system but it was completely pay to win and broken. Mainly with a low rng to make you buy more stuff from their store to make it less grindy. I score it 2-3.
So after its my opinion that a combo of the New World type and the Finial Fantasy type that is non limited in the amount of skills one can have. With cross over and utility. I just don't want to see the same old thing ;find sparkly thing, make one thing, then take those things to make this thing. I want to grind without knowing I am grinding and loving it, like you know how games used to be. Thanks for reading.
What I like and don't like about systems I have used:
Now, here is what I think is important in a crafting system without telling the Devs how I think it should be done:
Crafting should have a parallel progression to the adventuring class in that the player's commitment to crafting should reap parallel rewards to the adventurer who commits more. I say this as a casual gamer, who sometimes goes hardcore because of the rewards of raiding. That is not so say that the time sink in crafting should be continuous in the way that a raid is. Assuming a raid is about 2-4 hours, that does not mean high-end crafting should take 2-4 hours. (You should be able to commit less time in one sitting as an independent crafter.) It just means that the effort to get the skill, ingredients, recipes, and equipment should feel similar to the effort of slaying a dragon with 40 of your best buddies.
That said, a crafting system in an MMO at the lowest levels may attract everyone in the game, most especially a casual gamer, but to get the best products in the game, the crafter should identify as "hardcore" in the same way that a raider identifies as hardcore.
Simultaneously, a high-end crafter should not also have to be a raider. So the effort to become a high-end crafter should be independent of the drops, harvests, equipment, and recipes that come from high level/endgame content. It should be based primarily on their practicing of the craft, as it makes sense in real life. (In a real life setting, to master a skill, 10,000+ hours is a common metric. There are other metrics as well, but they all involve committing a lot of time just doing the craft.)
I think another lost detail on a good crafting system is not just what a crafter can do to hone their skill, but to improve on their equipment and tools. In MMOs, this seems to rely heavily on having different versions of the tools they use that signify basic, intermediate, and master craftsman through the quality of the product produced. I would wager, however, that a master craftsman of any given trade could create a masterpiece regardless of the tools you provided them.
So rather than tie the quality of the end product to solely the equipment and resources, how about making it more about the craftsman themselves? Sure, the better the ingredients and the better the tools, the better the likely outcome, but the more the crafter is committed to the art, the more likely their product will be better than the next crafter.
How does that translate? Say for, for example, you have two weapon smiths who have the same recipes, same equipment, and exact same ingredients and you want them both to create a longsword. Most commonly MMOs would have them put the ingredients in a box, push a button, and pull out a prize. They would both get the exact same prize. But what if they were required to heat the ore to a desired temperature, pour it into a mold, hammer the metal into a blade, reheat the metal to a desired temperature, hammer it some more, perhaps apply a folding technique, etc. How many players given the same task would apply the same level of effort? How many people would just decide to not craft at all? And how many would strive to create a longsword that is the best longsword on the server or in the game? In this case, the only defining difference between the two players is EFFORT. One came at it casually, and the other hard-core. (Some players are happy soloing or getting in small groups to do the easy stuff, and other players want to go raid.)
Apply this example to all of the possible trades in the game, and you have a system that totally sucks for a good number of players. Which is GOOD. Raiding sucks for a good number of players. But this will increase the rarity of items in the game, and create some monster crafters if they know that it's possible to have bragging rights on the BEST longsword in the game.
Okay, that's my humble but very opinionated input.
Regards,
Apogee Orbital
I disliked the WoW crafting system.
1. Early and Mid Level crafting was mostly pointless:
- Gathering professions leveled really bad while leveling. One would have to go way out of his way to level some (i.e. Mining) to always be on an appropriate skill level to the player level or one was easily WAY ahead with the skill level of what was appropriate for the level (skinning -> it leveled so fast, one was pretty much always maxed out). While Id even support having to actively work on the gathering profession progress, rather than just getting it for free while leveling, in WoW doing so wasn't really worth it, as one would be WAY faster using mounts at higher levels and additionally one couldn't really make any meaningful items at mid levels (see next point).
- Crafting options at mid level mostly pointless. First of there were only premade patterns which one could craft. Thus there might be a lvl 21 mail glove but if you needed a lvl 21 belt you might have to take a lvl 10 white belt, a lvl 17 leather belt (although you are a mail class), or had to wait till 33 for the next decent mail belt. (fictional example) It was VERY random actually even being able to craft something useful. On top of that anything actually useful, either required very specific materials, which were really hard to farm specifically (and usually way overpriced in auction house to be used for a mid lvl item) or the material costs were so cheap, that EVERYONE would build that item several times to speed level through the profession, making the item so cheap on auction houses, that selling the materials and buying the item was usually smarter, than crafting it on it own.
- Finally the game was also way to easy, to even work all this stuff out. Alchemy was actually giving some useful buffs, but the game was just to simple, that they actually mattered all the much.
2. In late game skills were usually leveled to obtain static buffs, which just felt like a chore and never really felt like crafting as in a profession. Or one would get the whole profession only to craft one single item, which was then soulbound to oneself, due to which, one couldnt just buy it on the auction house. Either way it just doesn't feel like commiting to a profession.
In any level range the crafting process itself (be it gathering, processing or crafting) was simply a loading bar. The game simply tied a waiting investment to any kind of progress. The only skill was to locate gatherable nodes (which quickly was automated through addons) and in very few cases finding the right recipe (which was usually a matter of gold on the auction house). The very few instances in which other things were required than just waiting a loading bar (such as a specific location often in a dungeon) were quickly removed in each upcoming addon to streamline the process to the point it was just waiting. At last leveling a non crafting profession was a matter of buying materials from a guide list, sitting around for few hours waiting for crafting to complete, obtaining a single item or static buff and never look into it again.
I liked the crafting system of Elder Scrolls online a bit more (I only know the first stages after release it might be different today). At any level one would be able to craft any item type. Need a lvl 21 Belt, Glove, Chest... in Mail, Leather, Cloth? Sure no problem, any level, any type, any time. And on top of it the item can even be modified in what stats it would support. Whenever an item order arrived first came a discussion with the customer what exactly he wanted, down to the style (look when wearing it) it should have. After configuring the item in the crafting menu, one then would get the required materials. Higher level would simply require more materials and at certain breakpoints it would switch to the next metal type. To be able to craft all these things, one first had to learn them through different means (research, finding skill books and so on). It took determination, luck, planning to be able to be versatile enough for customers to come asking for items.
On top Id really love to see a crafting system, which puts certain challenges into gathering/ crafting and focus less on quantity gathering but rather on quality.
Some ideas for a AoC gathering professions:
Note: my goal here is to imagine a gathering system which would feel immersive even in a pen & paper adventure -> imagine a scenario in which someone who is going out to collect some firewood and cutting down 20 trees in matter of seconds each and returning with an amount of wood to build a ship -> very unrealistic and also there are no details what so ever about the hardships of the process.
The core tasks in a gathering profession in my opinion should be:
- find high quality resources
- obtain the resources
- transport the resources to someone that can process the goods.
1. Find High Quality Resources:
The challenge shouldn't necessarily be to find ANY resource, but to find good resources. Wood, ore, fish, seeds, flowers and hides could all have quality to it. The quality should affect the result of the corresponding porcessing professions -> better quality of wood, fish, seeds and hides could turn into more output, better ore quality might yield more gems, which might be used for armor/ weapon crafting, better flowers might increase the potency of potions.
As of detecting the quality, it might be a cool ability to raise when improving ones gathering skill to detect resource quality "out in the field". The best gatherer might detect it when looking at a tree/ vein/ fish school and so on. Less skilled gatherer might have to go through the slightly tedious process of obtaining the resources first to look at the quality, but can then choose to leave poor quality materials behind. Non skilled gatherer will not know the quality of the goods until a processing profession checks it in town. Thus, being a higher level gather will lead to faster and more profitable gathering trips.
In order to create meaning for the quality of a resource, there needs to be a limit in how much can be brought back to town. This should be limited in the step "transport the resources".
2. Obtain the resources:
As I mentioned above I'd like to see a crafting system (especially gathering) which focuses on quality over quantity. Finding the one right tree/ ore vein/ fish school ... should be more important than the number of stacks per hour. The process of obtaining the material from that perfect resource node, should also not be the matter of just a 3 second cast bar. In my perfect "dream" game each gathering profession would come with a mini game. The better the mini game is completed the less the quality of the resource is ruined while gathering it. Thus, a perfect quality hide can still be ruined when the skinning mini game is failed, which leads to a poor quality hide or even just scrapes. A perfectly completed skinning mini game on a high quality animal might already lead to a very profitable gathering trip.
3. Transport the resources:
In order to make quality matter, there needs to be a limit to how much can be transported in a single trip. And each trip should be a meaningful investment. Both could be achieved, if a player needs to bring a cart on his gathering trips (honestly who carries logs of wood/ bloody hides/ rock/ore lumps in his backpack next to his food and valuables anyway?). The cart needs to be either rented or can be bought, but then might break a little after each trip requiring repair. Using the cart the movement speed should be limited. By placing higher quality resources further from any city nodes, it takes a little time to even reach high quality areas. Thus, a single trip is a meaningful time investment and requires preparation. By limiting the amount of resources the cart can carry (maybe also by reducing the carts speed the more you load onto it), players should be very selective on what they want to bring back to town.
Through these hardships meaningful "skills" can be created for skilled gatherer. Also the freehold system could become very meaningful for gatherer. A freehold on a mountain might be able to create a mine, or one can grow a forest on his land. In a fish pond fish can grow big and strong. These systems should come with certain daily chores, which represent the hardships of moving from gatherer and hunters to farmers. It requires a lot of steady work and planning, but its safer and yields higher quality products.
A meaningful implementation of such a system would probably get lots of folks into gathering as well as the follow up professions, as no rare high quality resource is useful without a skilled processing/ crafting expert.
But I actually just wanted to make this post to warn about bots. More than any other part of the game, I think bots are especially suited to crafting and trading. In particular, the repetitive, simple, mass-production of common items; and the 24/7 upkeep of markets and prices. To be honest, I don't think the war on bots is worth fighting in these areas. It's better to level the playing field, by making the simple parts of the systems as stream-lined as possible. If it's too tedious for a human, it's going to be automated by botters. But if you remove as many pointless button clicks and idle time as possible from the process, then bots won't have as much of an advantage.
Besides, I think the systems would be more enjoyable with that philosophy anyways. Less tedium and time wasting; more of the fun stuff that bots can't do: exploring, experimenting, decision-making, risk-management, predicting markets, etc.
My experience with crafting in MMOs is pretty sparse; modern and classic WoW, and Runescape. With other RPGs I have a pretty good amount of experience.
In Runescape and classic WoW, crafting did this really cool thing where crafting reagents dropped from random monsters around the world. As a casual player just killing things, you're finding items that might eventually be useful eventually, but when you first find them you have no clue. It gives an interesting choice on what to do with that item until you find out, and a cool sense of discovery when you finally find out. Finally finding out that Wicked Claws are used to create the Lionheart Helm in classic WoW. The way that you start collecting those things at level 40, but finally use them at level 60 for a really good piece of armor was pretty cool to me.
In Classic WoW I liked the way that more difficult zones had better herbs to collect. When it re-released two years ago, I found myself trekking into zones that were 10 levels above me so that I could create health potions far better than anybody else had so that I could sell them to other questers and win every single PvP encounter I came across. Very risky, very rewarding.
In Classic WoW I really liked the way that herbs were distributed based off the map details. Liferoot was found near rivers, purple lotus around ruins, earthroot around mountain and rocks, and stranglekelp in the ocean. Recognizing these patterns made me feel like a better herbalist, even outside of my character's skill level.
Time for a really niche example: Fargo's Souls mod for Terraria. To put it simply, the mod creates complex and expansive crafting trees that span every hour of the game, and combines them all into one mega-item at the very end. However, It does so in a way that gives you ever-evolving goals. In the first hour of the game, you might make yourself a Space Gun from a meteor. You see it marked as a 'Material' so you go check out what you can make from it. Turns out, if you combine it with six other items, you can make a Meteor Enchantment. It's a very good item, and you want it. However, one of the six items, the Meteor Staff, is unobtainable until several more hours into the game. Once you finally obtain the Meteor Staff and create your meta-item, you discover something else: that meta-item can be combined with eight other meta-items to create a meta-meta-item. This creates an interesting dynamic where your goal to craft a good item leads you to much deeper into the game. And once you reach that goal, you're instantly given a new one.
...needless to say, if I could spend all my time crafting in an MMO, I would.
An example of this, just off the top of my head, could be something like entering in a string of characters within a time limit, or a timing based mini-game where you click to strike a sword you're forging when the timing is perfect.
I would really just love to see something other than time investment that will separate the good crafters from the great ones.
This was mainly because the craft time increased the more items you made.
Coming from Wow where the time stayed the same and then crafting 100 Linen bolt was just wasting time.
But in GW2 this got faster with each craft.
I also liked that you needed to discover the recipes by just trying to put 4 items together.
That gave a sense of mystery not knowing what you would craft until you made it once.
And also gave you a goal to find all recipes.
And then also that some items for crafting where only sold by quest NPC's in the world.
And you needed to finish their quests before you could unlock the vendor part.
This gave you a meaning to go out into the world and do quests even at Max level.
For gathering I enjoyed Black desert a lot.
To just be able to go out into the world run up to any tree and be able to gather it.
And you could craft better axes and enhance them. And this would give you more wood from gathering.
(crafting in BDO was just a afk thing. And that was not as enjoyable.)
Probably the same story would be for processers - the best of the best mithril veins gathered could be smelted by most of the processers, but as the effect, we would see just good mithril bars. However the dedicated processer who spent most of his life could produce super-duper mithrill bar, needed for top class weapon/armor.
And at the end, we would have crafters who most could produce great armor but only couple of dedicated dudes on the server could make its stats couple of % better than others (of course using the top materials smelted and gathered by his source). Moreover, maybe the most dedicated crafters could have deeper specialization at the end of their tree, like alchemist could produce some kind of potions but never others, and other alchemist could do others... or armor smithing, all of them could do great armors but the most dedicated ones, as the last spot on the tree could produce only helmets slightly better than the majority.
This way - if you focus more on crafting than on fighting - maybe you could be recognized as the expert of full helmets only, while majority could make just great helmets.
Same here, crafting in SWG was separate profession. Only thing i did not like was lack of some basic fighting skills to gather some resources.
Crafters had their own mastery stats that translated directly to crafting. Better mastery = better stats on crafted item, more slots for stat upgrades.
Reverse engineering was fun also. You could RE more items based on level and get superior item, stats combined and upped from REed items, based on luck in your gear.
Resources were harvested either by collecting , harvesting or hunting / killing.
And so , I got a idea out of the info we have so far.
If the crafters need to gather recipes through quests , learn from a mentor or decraft items to get the blueprint.
Items out in the world need to be good one until a crafter get the blueprint of it, and make variants of it , that is better in one way or an other.
Good luck with the crafting system!
I think that gaining "whole" weapons and armour from raid bosses should have a very low probability of dropping compared to blueprints/recipes for top rated items - maybe even having a modifier such that if an item (i.e. sword) has relatively common stats it maybe gets dropped about as commonly as a recipe for such an item, while a rare item drops half as frequently as a comparable recipe, and so on. The reason I think this is a good idea is that it encourages the crafting professions and gives values to them. It also makes gaining high end gear from a raid that much more valuable.
Another potentially good system in encouraging items to be crafted rather than farmed, is to make gear above a certain limit dropped from raid bosses limited. By this I mean suppose there is a super-duper boss that has just been raided for the first time (first n-times) and drops a totally high end bit of gear, from then on the level of gear that can be obtained from said boss drops to the next tier down where maybe a similar pool gear exists. In order to not make these bosses totally worthless (gear-wise) in the future if one of the weapons that gained from it disappears into a sink, then it gets added back into the pool of possible drops.
While I don't particularly like the idea of RNG on item stats, I think what could be valuable is having RNG on the class of the item that is produced. For example a recipe for a particular item might have a base tier (i.e. common) and a maximum (?) but depending on a number of factors the chance of getting an item of a higher tier than the base one exists. Some of the factors that I think could play into such a system would be things like the current level of the crafter (in the profession of the item under creation) and the base tier of the item. Using swords again as an example if an apprentice blacksmith were to create a basic sword, the sword would most likely never go above the tier of common, while an absolute master craftsmen while using the same blueprint would have a good chance of creating a rare basic sword and a very slim chance of making it epic. The tools used to make the blueprint could also be another factor in the likely outcome of the tier of the item (i.e. basic iron hammer vs a firestone hammer).
A number of other things I think would make the crafting experience interesting are as follows:
- The class and level of the craftsman could influence the stats of the item due to "understanding". Something like a pure mage swordsmith would give a pure bonus to intelligence for a sword due having a deep understanding of magic, while a magic swordsman type class might give some additional stats to intelligence, and strength and now because their weapon is primarily centred around swords the damage is slightly increased when making sword like weapons. Or an assassin might make better knives that give agility, etc. This type of modifier could again increase the depth of the crafting system while also ensuring specialization and reputation for players putting in the time to master their crafts
- The number of employees and their level in the crafting system within the freehold could determine how many items can be mass produced, i.e. 2 apprentice blacksmiths employed could automatically produce the common swords that will be used to generate a passive income while the player focuses on the more specialised/time-consuming item under commission
- As also mentioned previously having a minigame for when wanting to "manually" create an item would also be interesting in particular if it is in combination of some of the things mentioned previously in the post
- Maybe above a certain level of craftsmanship there would be an option to allow players to create and customise the appearance of items and their stats creating unique items "semi-exclusive" to the players
- As mentioned in a previous post, there could be temporary schematics, and I would like to build on this idea by suggesting a learning system. If a player crafts x number of temporary schematics of the same type they should then learn the recipe and this should then be available to them from then on. This way guilds and individual players would have the ability to be known for being able to produce certain gear and items
- Using the idea of the SWG system of crafting, blueprints and recipes as they advance could have more stringent requirements on the quality of material that is being used. For smithing this could be the level of purity of a mineral (i.e. mined iron has a relatively low level purity, while a player specialising in smelting could produce 90-99% purities, etc.), this would allow "low-level" materials to remain in demand and relevant while also making high level gear more precious
A more concrete example of how I would imagine the interplay of the various ideas from above may work:
Suppose there are two players whose base class is of the cleric variety one of them is specialised in heals while the other is of the necromantic variety. The healer belongs to a "holy" religion, while the necromancer belongs to an "evil" religion. Both players are commissioned to make a staff based off the same blueprint that for example requires wood for the handle, a crystal for the power source and wrappings of some kind to be used for holding the staff.
Due to the "alignment" of the necromancer they produce items that have an inherent life steal ability on hit along with an intelligence buff and a skill cost reduction due to the class. In order for the necromancer to produce the top of its tier staff for necromancers he/she may select the wood of the "withering tree" along with an abyssal crystal and some type of cloth dropped by a ghost like monster. In the process of forging the staff equipment made out of abyssal steel is used.
While the healer might use equipment made out of adamantium (or some "holy" metal), wood of the world tree, a blessed stone and some blessed cloth.
The staff produced by both would be comparable in tier and overall stats but be very much geared towards a particular type of build. In addition while the materials are similar the places that they would need to be gathered from would vastly differ meaning not all staff producers go and kill the same mobs. And if you want to be the top PvP necromancer you would then know who to go to in order to acquire the right equipment
What are some examples of crafting systems and mechanics you’ve enjoyed from other games, and why? What percentage of your time do you typically find yourself engaged in crafting activities in an MMO?"
I have been eagerly waiting for this question.
The quick answers:
The crafting systems I have the most familiarity with and enjoyed are:
"Minecraft (modded)": measurable progress: (depending on the mods) 40-60% other/60-40% crafting
"Final Fantasy 11(treasure's expansion and earlier)": Meaningful use of items that get crafted: 80% other/20% crafting
"Final Fantasy 14": Mini-game is engaging: 40%other/60%crafting
FF11: The thing I loved the most from the FFXI crafting system was that it was the primary way to upgrade gear. Even at high levels. Sure you had Named Monster drops, relics, treasure chests, and quest rewards, but, until max level(of that time), you could not fill out all your gear slots with only dropped gear and still be in top combat condition. And because the gear was rare and often requiring a higher level character than when it was equip-able, the gear would be far more expensive than what most people could afford at level.
The perfect example of this would be the level 10 gear Astral Rings. They gave the effect of: "Converts 25HP into 25MP." At level 10 this effect was HUGE. So huge, that, it was useable for 50+ levels depending on your other gear. It made playing Galka mages much easier, and turned TaruTaru into a 1 HP endless fountain of mana.
However, they cost far more than a normal level 10 character would ever be able to afford. As such, while the dropped gear was far better than most crafted equipment, crafted gear was still wanted and sold well.
Another good thing was consumable crafts. As a mage, that leveled cooking, you could bring the ingredients of MP restoration consumables and save a massive amount of inventory space. Same could also be done with Arrow/Bolt users and woodworking. Allowing you to bring a massive amount more of consumables than if you only brought the finished consumable.
FF14: On the other hand, FF14 went into the opposite direction. main story quests would give you all the gear you would need. Dungeon dropped gear was extremely easy and common to get. Consumables were generally overkill and handed out like candy at holloween. As such, while the crafting systems itself was fun to use (under level) it felt entirely pointless. As the only people would buy gear would be other crafters. And this would only be if you were one of the crafters that was only leveling a single craft. As, unlike FF11 which you could only max out 3 of 8 crafts, anyone could reach max level in all crafts. So you could just make everything you would need yourself or get the quest/token gear and never need to interact with other players. Even more so if you also did the gathering yourself.
Now the crafting of items itself was quite fun. But only ever when under leveled. Because of a single major flaw with it. The system was built around stat checking. If you were at level, and had the gear a dedicated crafter would, crafting would be a trivial and tedious task. You would be able to overpower the crafting with raw stats and remove the need for any skill or thought.
As result, while it was a fun thing to engage with in and of itself overall it felt tedious and pointless.
Minecraft: Unlike FF14, Minecraft never felt like a pointless thing to craft. Unless you were to do a craft pointlessly, however that would be your fault. You explore the world, gather materials to use for your crafts, which you made to achieve a task.
A common theme, throughout, modded Minecaft is the use of low tier ingredients even in high tier gear/crafts. As a result, you never feel disappointed when mining up low tier ores. And are not harshly punished for overproducing something.
And with that we have 3 levels of integration of the crafting system with the overall game. In FF14 you could remove crafting altogether and the game would function just fine, for non-crafters. In FF11 things would be extremely inconvenient but do-able. And in Minecraft, completely break the game.
But this also points out; the greatness of crafting is determined more by the systems surrounding it than the system itself.
Much like how a great combat system is defined just as much by the enemies the player fights as what the player does to fight them.
So to is true for crafters and crafting.
Inventory space the crafter's skill slots
Currency the crafter's mana
Finished products the crafter's boss
Material costs the boss's HP
Auction house the crafter's pug party
For crafters, crafting is our combat.
- in Blade and Soul you can choose whitch item you want after slaying the endboss and each of them was necessary for crafting an object for upgrading your gear. it was bound so everyone did it (or buy it from shop)
- ias well you could craft in your guildmenü stuff for upgrading your playerskills so thats a way to craft siedge stuff because only guilds do wars right?
- Maybe you implement a little minigame in whitch you hit a little zone for becoming bedder quality.
- why high crafting stuff didn't use low tier stuff so the low tier stuff isn't worthless , stuck only in the aktionhouse and new crafter have to pay gold (for mats) to become higher and only after that making money
-a little creativity like minecraft where you can use a variety of matereals in a different order to gain something new
Harvesting - Back in Pre-Alpha Crowfall the Harvesting system was 1/2 passive progression and 1/2 gear/stat to get to end game. Although the passive system was in my opinion nice but extremely slow it worked for the longevity of the game, if you had some sort of Catchup mechanic (which Crowfall never did, instead they scrapped passive progression altogether). Interaction with the resource nodes was actually very pleasant due to keeping situational awareness at all times in an open world PvP zone where killing harvesters was very beneficial due to full inventory loot on death, but also due to a nice mini game while harvesting. The mini game was hitting weak spots that would basically increase your damage to the node if procced off stats. You would essentially have to place your reticle over the target which would appear randomly on the node. You didn't have to hit it but it would speed up the progress of destroying the node and collecting loot. I loved it due to the fact of combining these 2 things in perfect unison and never making it boring to harvest since you would constantly try to harvest fast and effectively but also keep vigilant against opponents. Nice amount of stress and interaction, still in my opinion one of the best harvesting systems I've had the pleasure of testing. The passive system has been replaced by a more grindy RNG drop off whatever your harvesting, which is not bad but a bit grindy and expensive to upgrade. I'm Hoping Ashes of Creation would use very similar if not the same type of model of Crowfall, to build a very engaging and intense harvest experience rather then just interact and move on grind (kinda boring).
Crafting - Again back in Pre-Alpha Crowfall the crafting was 1/2 passive progression and 1/2 gear/stat for end game optimization and to create the best gear. This is a min max system, if you wanted the best gear then you do whatever you need to in order to max cap all stats to make the best possible equipment, although RNG still played a part. The crafting experience was extremely long and a bit drawn out but, what I love passionately about it is that you can make 2 of the same items and get completely different results, based of the RNG rolls per item, even at max stats. Now Pre-Alpha did take awhile to craft 1 item due to constantly clicking and making the baseline ingredients and sub components to finally get the end product, it felt amazing to me. It made me feel like I was actually crafting the weapon from scratch and if the end result was optimal and came out well it was extremely rewarding to hand it off to another player or keep for myself. If the end result failed or came out with poor rolls it did feel a bit demoralizing but that's all part of the process isn't it? Now the current state of Crowfall the passive system again is replaced by an RNG proc to further enhance your particular craft, which again feels a bit grindy and expensive to upgrade. Its still a decent way to get to end game. The area I am not happy with is that they extremely watered down the crafting system by making bulk and max sub components which takes a lot away from the varying results but quickens the process dramatically. What used to take 30 minutes for a full set of armor now takes under 3. Also the factory which is nice and very efficient allows you to take lets say a max crafted weapon with the best results and copy that weapon multiple times based off the same resources so that you could mass produce it for your guild. The watering down of this system detoured me very much and the simplification of it all as well. Making me feel less important and more of a chained factory worker in an assembly line. Now the interdependency of all the crafting I really enjoy, it engages the community very actively in order to create the best gear. Meaning if you wanted to craft a 2 handed sword as a blacksmith you would have to get weapon grips from either a leatherworker or a woodworker depending on what outcome you wish to produce. All crafting required some materials from another craft which meant a high skilled blacksmith would seek out a Woodworker or Leatherworker of similar skill in order to obtain optimal results in the craft. If Ashes of Creation would incorporate a system similar to this in my opinion even superior I believe not only would you take the Crown as the best MMO but also the best player crafting/harvesting ever designed.
my take on a meaningful crafting system is similar to the way i is shown in animes like Danmachi. There are Adventurers that long for the defeat of some certain mythical boss, and when they intent to defeat certain boss they would always have a group of crafters, gatherers and cooks with them. First to Reach the boss, second to maintain equipment and third to extract the valuebales that come with any rare encounter.
It could be placed in the game by having master crafter apply a short buff to a group (nothing gamebreaking but nice to have - like 2% more weapon damage for weaponsmithies). Mastergatherers shall be needed in high level content to get everything out of rare encounters. Special Quests to obtain certain materials for unique craftables would be lovely.
I have played many mmos and always dug myself into crafting. In My first mmo, runes of magic i spend many hours even tho the crafting system was utter trash xD, there was no value, no reason to even pick it up. My second mmo, Rift gave me a way different experience. I powerleveled my way to maxlevel, afterwards i was either doing group stuff with a handful of people i liked, or i sat in the crafting area and interacted with the worldchat trying to sell my weapons i could craft. It was soooooooooooo cool, i remember having dozens of people on my friendlist that could not effort a high level weapon yet but added me just so they could message me later. Player interaction is the best.
At the moment there are no mmos to play, as far as i can tell, so i play Path of Exile. Highly RNG Crafting except for a few Crafting methods. But sometimes even the ugliest Item that just does not seem to make any sense will land me a lot of money because that one guy in the world had this funny build idea that need a seemlingly random jewel.
In short:
RNG - sometimes nice but mostly just depressing
Hard work to master a disciplin - good
Significant reasons to become a master - good
Player Interaction - good
Special Quests - would be nice
Click to craft is fine, dont need any flashy crafting animations.
EDIT - I tried Shroud of the Avatar again to see what has changed. Leveling skills has gone from sort of realistic in taking a long time to every time you do something (at least in low level) it raises that skill a full level. They must have gotten complaints from the usual suspects wanting to level everything to max level in a week or less. Sad. That destroys the one good thing about Shroud.
My second favorite for crafting is Boundless. It's similar in that you don't level gem crafting by killing things. You level killing things by killing things.
Both of these master crafters or master mages, healers, fighters, etc. really know their stuff and how it all ties together. The elite are really elite rather than just good at killing things and got all the other skills by killing.
In MMOs when there is a economy to support craftsmen I will typically craft as much as I am able, typically leaving only to gather more material. In single player RPGs I spend large amounts of time making multiple custom gear sets just for fun. I will echo others in the hope that crafting is meaningful, interconnected, and relevant to the economy and other game systems throughout the lifetime of AoC. I hope the devs take some insight from modern survival games which by and large have more complex rewarding crafting than most mmos. Perhaps refiners are needed not just to make bricks and ingots, but they need to make tiered forges and workbenches as well.
I hope AoC avoids some pitfalls from other crafting systems. In GW2 crafting was a mandatory process to get almost all high tier gear, it boosted character level, was account linked, and time gated. All bad imo, and combined these tanked the economy because finished products sold for a fraction of the base materials.