My Dream for Crafting...

Everyone who is invested in AoC knows that one of its main foundational pillars is player crafting. It is one of the reasons I am very excited about Ashes. The thought of crafting, shipping goods, and protecting those goods in epic PvP combat fills me with equal parts joy and bloodlust.

I love crafting in MMOs and have spent many 100s of hours farming and crafting but one thing has always struck me as boring and lazy.

In almost all RPGs and MMOs I've played over the last two decades(too many), crafting has been the same for 20 years or more. The same cycle every time. Find items, click items in a menu, and wait for the item to craft. Collecting materials can be challenging and fun on occasion but usually, the crafting side of professions is boring non-gameplay. The only deterrent is it being mind-numbingly tedious. It makes me wonder what if crafting could be different, better, but how?

Imagine if crafting required skills beyond clicking the "create item" button. If there were sort of mini-games associated with each crafting skill. If certain crafting mini-games got very hard at a high level and only certain people on the server could manage to achieve a perfect craft based on their player skill. Sure almost everyone could make a decent piece of armor and you could grind to make great armor but "ArmorSmith McBadass" can just really get it maxed out because all he does is smith armor and is damn good at it.

I'd imagine blacksmithing would be about keeping the fire hot enough, heating the metal to the right temp to strike certain stats into it(+crit but -durability if it's super hot or w/e), and cooling the metal at the right time. I'm no smithing expert but I think a general idea is there.

I think it would add a very nice depth of gameplay and give people something they can just relax in town and grind some crafting skills that are actually fun and give players a chance to shine.

I don't think it's within Ashes of Creation's scope at this point because they are already tackling so many issues and pioneering new technologies but I have had this idea for a few years and would love to see it come to life.

What do you guys think about an active mini-game style crafting vs menu crafting?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

keenow

TheSgtPepper wrote: »

Sounds like they implemented a lot of ideas I've had myself! Would love to know the game if you can remember it! I'm hoping ashes has something like this but I know it would be a HUGE undertaking and they have a full plate already.

I think it was called Fantasy Life? There were several different jobs you could switch between, but I remember playing the whole game as a tailor xD Not the best graphics, since it was an old handheld system, but it was super fun to actually play. I don't think the visuals did it justice, I could mash those sewing buttons all day!
I hope they implement something a little more involved, too! Just getting the items together is a gatherers fantasy, not a crafters! I think putting it together should be fun as well. Kind of like how fishing isn't really fun if there's not a minigame involved, I feel the same way about crafting.

Kotter

SWG crafting was good.

Ransel

I've seen some games require skill checks while crafting, and you get a range of abilities to use similar to combat abilities you can put in a hotbar.

An active crafting system can become annoying after a while though, especially if you want to make a 1000 "widgets" for grinding xp.

TheSgtPepper

Came back to Necro this thread. I can't believe it but after hearing it directly from Steven it seems like Ashes will have crafting "mini-games" of some sort.

Please, Steven & Team, I'm ready to love(MMOs) again, please don't hurt me.

Child Item