The importance of an engaging crafting system

One thing that I have seen happen time and time again in MMORPGs is a pathetic crafting system. Where all you need to do to gather and make items is click once. Even in purported sandbox-y games, they often have crafting systems that are rudimentary at best.

I feel it is quite important that MMORPGs offer an engaging system for crafting, though perhaps not as in depth as the combat. For example, Everquest 2 treated each crafting attempt like an encounter, with abilities to use and a completion/quality system balanced against durability. You could make mistakes and fail in the crafting attempt. Something similar to this is currently present in Final Fantasy 14, which goes further and even has specialized crafting gear. They also have a similar but smaller system for gathering.

As someone who adored the crafting system in Everquest 2, and Star Wars Galaxies, I have seen the value of having such systems.

As of now I have not heard much about the crafting system for Ashes of Creation, but I hope that it takes the good from previous and current games and weaves it into the world. I feel Having engaging gameplay, and even making it a little skill based, is important to crafting and should be included.

Thoughts?

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Everdark

I personally very much enjoyed the 'encounter' based crafting of EQ2 and I think it did make the experience more engaging. It was still repetitive however.

Tyranthraxus

The lead game designer, Jeff Bard, has specific experience with SWG; I'm sure the crafting system will be different from all of the cookie-cutter WoW clones, out there!

Noaani

Tyranthraxus wrote: »

The lead game designer, Jeff Bard, has specific experience with SWG

And EQ2.

The crafting in EQ2 was ok, but I would want to see a different mini-game for each different crafting class.

Just something to break up the repetition a bit, and make it so a weaponsmith doesn't feel the same to play as a tailor.

Vhaeyne

Was a fan of FFXIV, and SWG crafting systems. I have never liked just clicking on a item in a list and watching a bar move over and over.

What excites me the most about AOCs crafting is that materials should retain their value across all levels. This is great for the economy and keeps content alive. I am very hopeful about AOCs crafting. In fact I am more sold on what class and race I want to play, and am torn about what crafts I want to get into.

Ship building is where my heart is right now, but who knows if it will be very good at generating income.

palabana

As long as it's nothing like Cyberpunk 2077's crafting system, I'm fine with anything. CP2077's crafting system was tedious and unengaging in terms of user experience and visual/audio cues.

Greendino

Noaani wrote: »

Tyranthraxus wrote: »

The lead game designer, Jeff Bard, has specific experience with SWG

And EQ2.

The crafting in EQ2 was ok, but I would want to see a different mini-game for each different crafting class.

Just something to break up the repetition a bit, and make it so a weaponsmith doesn't feel the same to play as a tailor.

I agree! EQ2's system was good for what it was, especially at the time, but variations on it would be nice. However even it just iterates on EQ2's and FFXIV's system and makes it better, I will be quite happy.

Kingzookins

I have 0 experience with the 2 games above mentioned, but want a lot from mmorpg's today. I cant speak for how safe ashes of creation is playing to the guideline set for this genre, but I would love skill based crafting system. Im not talking about having a crafting skill, but actual skill based mechanics. Chronicles of elyria presented this before their unfortunate collapse due to covid, but would love to see a more involved system. I played many mmo's -all of which I couldn't love- they all used the same crafting system, none of them made anyone feel special crafting was just something you do.

It would be great for players like me who dislike combat or even the grind of PVE to be able to have fun with crafting or smaller non PVP systems, to be able to matter. I am still new to ashes of creation and what they are doing but would be nice to see systems like this in place tbh

Greendino

Kingzookins wrote: »

I have 0 experience with the 2 games above mentioned, but want a lot from mmorpg's today. I cant speak for how safe ashes of creation is playing to the guideline set for this genre, but I would love skill based crafting system. Im not talking about having a crafting skill, but actual skill based mechanics. Chronicles of elyria presented this before their unfortunate collapse due to covid, but would love to see a more involved system. I played many mmo's -all of which I couldn't love- they all used the same crafting system, none of them made anyone feel special crafting was just something you do.

It would be great for players like me who dislike combat or even the grind of PVE to be able to have fun with crafting or smaller non PVP systems, to be able to matter. I am still new to ashes of creation and what they are doing but would be nice to see systems like this in place tbh

It's tough to describe, but a more recent comparison might be FFXIV's crafting system, which is very similar to what Everquest 2's was. It suffers from the same issue regarding a lack of player interaction, as crafted gear is essentially not needed.

Star War's Galaxies's system was... frankly a bit ridiculous to be honest. However one its key things was that no player was fully able to master more than 2-3 different professions, and crafting was included in this. Combine this with the the fact that it had:

Armorsmiths
Weaponsmiths
Chefs
Tailors
Droid Engineers
Architects
and Merchants (for making player shops) Purely on the artisan side.

Then you had doctors and Bio Engineers as well, who were also part of the crafting side of things.

It was a system that created inter dependencies, though it wasn't perfect, hence why I think a bit of a synthesis of SWG's and EQ2's systems would be what is needed.

Wulfenthrad

Ultimately, the big thing that I'm looking for is for each profession to feel genuinely unique from one another. As OP stated, a lot of MMOs have a fairly rudimentary crafting system that are only really separated by whether you click on a tree or a rock.

When I'm say, smelting ore into bars, I want to feel like I'm smelting them into bars instead of just clicking a button in a menu. When I'm tanning a hide, I want it to feel different from those bars I smelted earlier, and more than just going to a different station.

While the idea of giving each profession their own mini-game would help, I feel it needs more than that. I feel that having different game-play loops associate with each profession would help in that regard. For example, if you were a hunter, you would have actually hunt mobs that would either run away or give you considerably less loot if you failed to get a clean kill on them. Compared to something like herbalism, where having a keen eye can help you separate a rare herb from a similar looking common herb.

Whatever system they use, localized inventories will make crafting, especially in large quantities, will make AoC feel substantially different from other games.

Varkun

While I love all aspects of MMO's it is the crafting that I really love to delve into and sadly in recent MMO's this is little more than an afterthought. No real thought is given to the economy and how the artisan skills should be a viable and integral part of a games economy.

Intrepid have promised us that artisan skills and the player driven economy are one of the main pillars of the game and as of now we are quite light on details as to how this will all work. Personally I can not help but feel Intrepid are keeping this information very close to their chest because there are many eyes on AOC and with sometime before release there is the risk of ideas being picked up by other developers so to speak.

I have not played the above mentioned games but I did play Vanguard and there was a very involved mini game with crafting which involved different stages of the process, when ingredients were to be added and you could fail if you tried to make something beyond your skill resulting in the loss of your materials. There were dedicated gear for gathering, processing and crafting that gave small bonuses to yields or progress during the crafting process.

It took you just as long to level your artisan skills as it did your adventuring levels. While you could be a gatherer processor and crafter on one character you could not master everything say if you wanted to be a woodworker or jeweller you would need to play a second or third character. I actually made most of my gold simply by selling horse shoes that gave a slight bonus to movement speed.

I know there are a number of devs working for Intrepid who did work on Vanguard.

Greendino

Varkun wrote: »

While I love all aspects of MMO's it is the crafting that I really love to delve into and sadly in recent MMO's this is little more than an afterthought. No real thought is given to the economy and how the artisan skills should be a viable and integral part of a games economy.

Intrepid have promised us that artisan skills and the player driven economy are one of the main pillars of the game and as of now we are quite light on details as to how this will all work. Personally I can not help but feel Intrepid are keeping this information very close to their chest because there are many eyes on AOC and with sometime before release there is the risk of ideas being picked up by other developers so to speak.

I have not played the above mentioned games but I did play Vanguard and there was a very involved mini game with crafting which involved different stages of the process, when ingredients were to be added and you could fail if you tried to make something beyond your skill resulting in the loss of your materials. There were dedicated gear for gathering, processing and crafting that gave small bonuses to yields or progress during the crafting process.

It took you just as long to level your artisan skills as it did your adventuring levels. While you could be a gatherer processor and crafter on one character you could not master everything say if you wanted to be a woodworker or jeweller you would need to play a second or third character. I actually made most of my gold simply by selling horse shoes that gave a slight bonus to movement speed.

I know there are a number of devs working for Intrepid who did work on Vanguard.

I feel it may simply be that the crafting system isn't quite at a point where its ready to shown off. This is understandable, as the core mechanics of the Node system, combat, classes, and progression are also not fully complete. Thankfully crafting as a whole is not tied into these things, and should just slot nicely into its place when ready.

Blandmarrow

I do agree that a engaging crafting system important, almost mandatory in my opinion. The only thing that differentiates traders in most other games is the price. I'd much rather have each crafters products more unique so it actually matters who you buy from and not just a game of who can undercut someone else the most.

ariatras

Vhaeyne wrote: »

Was a fan of FFXIV, and SWG crafting systems. I have never liked just clicking on a item in a list and watching a bar move over and over.

What excites me the most about AOCs crafting is that materials should retain their value across all levels. This is great for the economy and keeps content alive. I am very hopeful about AOCs crafting. In fact I am more sold on what class and race I want to play, and am torn about what crafts I want to get into.

Ship building is where my heart is right now, but who knows if it will be very good at generating income.

I did enjoy FFXIV's crafting. I didn't enjoy the ability to literally level up all professions on one character.

Vhaeyne

ariatras wrote: »

I did enjoy FFXIV's crafting. I didn't enjoy the ability to literally level up all professions on one character.

You are right about that. Unfortunately FFXIV fans have the mental illness where they want to 100% complete everything. Of course you can buy, and sale items from other servers which negates the need to craft anything to make money. While people are buying crap off the AH to cap their crafting jobs faster. I am buying the crap they need for low gil on other servers, and getting a profit on my server.

Lucky for us, both of those problems wont exist in AOC. As much as I did enjoy profiting off of it.

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