Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

What is the least appealing crafting profession from past MMOs?

    • 1785 posts
    December 29, 2020 1:11 PM PST

    Hi everyone!  I have another question for the community, and I'm hopeful that you all will indulge me on this one :)

    Most of us here have played at least several different MMOs, and many of them have different crafting professions in them.  But those professions aren't always equally interesting or appealing.

    So, my question for you all is:  What was the least appealing crafting profession that you have seen in other games you have played, and what could have been done to make it more interesting or fun?

     

    As always, there is no right or wrong answer here and there's no design decision that hinges on this or anything like that.  This is simply a topic I'd like to see the community discuss.  Looking forward to reading the replies!

     

    • 20 posts
    December 29, 2020 1:24 PM PST

    For me, that was always Mining/Blacksmithing. The one I enjoyed the most was JC.

    • 1315 posts
    December 29, 2020 1:52 PM PST

    Any crafting system where 95% of your “crafting time” is spent harvesting materials.  I will hard pass on leveling another crafting system where you spend 20 hours farming raw materials that you burn in under an hour just feeding materials to a bottomless trashcan for skill raises.  Note that this is an objection to farming bulk materials, if it takes 20 hours to find a super rare ingredient for a single specific item that is acceptable as that is part of the risk vs reward of the actual item and not leveling the skill. 

    If I would have to say a specific craft that should be cool but isn’t I would say Fletching.  Technically fletching is just arrow making as a bowyer is who makes bows but even if you combine them there really is just not much of a depth of recipe.  A Woodworker that focuses on weapon and shield making would be a better fit as that is a fairly extensive list of objects possible. 

    • 1921 posts
    December 29, 2020 2:11 PM PST

    In EQ1, the least appealing to me was any tradeskill that required mana vials. (or similar)
    It basically gave the big middle finger to anyone who was trying to do tradeskills without being an Enchanter or having a pocket Enchanter.  I'd like to not buy a drink for the dev that implemented that idea.
    IMO, the enforced requirement of an Enchanter essentially bent over the entire crafting population of any given server and said "Enchanters are driving".  Hopefully that's explicit enough. ;)

    However, setting that aside, I would say the least appealing was Alchemy, due to the cost of components.  I mean.. it was.. REALLY expensive in EQ1 to produce some of those outputs, like Gate Potions.  Didn't have to be, but that was how they were implemented.  Always made me wonder why Designers created systems that they didn't want players to use.  I mean, why bother, then?  Just leave it out.

    Making any of these systems more interesting or fun is easy:  Lower the barrier to entry & use.  Allow vast quantities to be produced.  Have infinite NPC demand & no-coin rewards.  Don't bait and switch.  Make all professions equally useful (via after-market customization/enchantment/enhancement widgets) or let one player, with enough time and effort, be able to Master all professions.  Don't have any non-interactive action take longer than 12 seconds.
    If they're meant to be fun, make them fun, don't make them punitive.  And to be clear, I completely understand, entirely, the difference between challenging and punitive.

    In my opinion, any attempt at forced interdependence is punitive, because human nature is greedy.  If it were up to me, I would remove the human greed from that fun equation.
    The most fun crafting I've ever participated in was EQ2 poisons, eventually.  Initially the system wasn't great, but they did eventually, finally, put in a really great system after iterating with the community.

    These days, I typically go for chef or cook, just because I don't like being taken advantage of by other players for the most basic of required consumables.

    • 58 posts
    December 29, 2020 2:24 PM PST

    What was the least appealing crafting profession that you have seen in other games you have played, and what could have been done to make it more interesting or fun?

    As far as least appealing, I find that a lot of MMOs have issues with "equipment" professions. Weaponsmith, armorsmith, jeweler—whatever variations. The problem is usually that the craftsman can make generic gear that simply doesn't compete with easily found drops. It usually plays out in a way that means "good" crafted gear is only for folks' alts for twinking, until they find upgrades of their own. This usually leads people toward consumable professions, where often consumables are more available and more useful than anything found through adventuring (usually looted consumables are laughably trashy).

    As far as what can be done, here's my take:

    1.) Crafted equipment needs to have some sort of advantage in enough cases where there is real demand. Being more customizable (you already touched on this), certain crafted-only effects (Ex.: continental effects in Vanguard), more customizable (perhaps slots for special materials post-creation, be it gems, etc., crafted or found), perhaps customizable appearance as well (ala ESO), etc.

    2.) Crafted items need to be integral to the economy. Alongside this, there needs to be reasons to not sell a lot of looted gear on the market. First thoughts would be systems like deconstruction, where the components of looted gear are more valuable (and maybe feeding back into the crafting loop). Having "trash loot" compete on the market with crafted gear is a good sign that crafted gear is not competetive. Alongside this, it should be commonplace for crafters to be commissioned for specific gear rather than a slough of generic gear collecting dust on the market.

    3.) There needs to be a very strong codependence between crafting and the other gameplay mechanics, such as adventuring. Instead of a ton of "trash loot" for players to simply sell to NPC vendors, a large percentage of loot should be useful and meaningful for a crafter. It should make more sense for an adventurer to sell/trade looted items to a crafter than vendors. A harvester should know going into a dangerous area that there is a chance they may find a sought-after component that a crafter could use either to better the harvester (if that's possible), or for other gameplay spheres. This is important both socially and economically. This improves the feeling of belonging and place for each role

    4.) Effort needs to be a guiding factor, translated into the quality of the equipment. Time and danger should be a part of the equation to make a sought-after product. It is my strong belief that crafting a piece of gear that a player may wear for days or weeks (hopeffully even longer) should not take 3 minutes. There should be a story behind a piece of crafted gear just as if it was found or looted.

    5.) "Trash crafted gear" should not be a thing. Be it for XP or other reasons, a player should not have to make 200 generic leather boots mindlessly to progress. This is much like the above point about the significance of each item. Progression should come from other means, because repetition inherently devalues the bond between a player and their products. Work orders, like that of Vanguard and I'm sure plenty of other games, are a nice in-between. I'm sure other ways of progression could be derived as well. Basically, progression should not be mindless, and the time and effort expended for a product should be reflected in the XP/progression value, not the quantity of iworthless items.

    I should probably stop there before I go into full essay mode, but in general, crafted items often don't feel important. I think you're already on board for a lot of key tenets that could make Pantheon crafting excellent, but there are definitely more bad examples than good, if the goal is to make crafting be a truly special aspect of the game. Thanks for taking the time to collect opinions!

    EDITED: Formatting ended up being super janky for some reason. Manually separated the different points since bulleted lists aren't seeming to work. =(


    This post was edited by Desryn at December 29, 2020 2:34 PM PST
    • 2419 posts
    December 29, 2020 2:50 PM PST

    Fletching in EQ1.  The problem was that only rangers really benefited from high end bows and arrows.  Other classes that could use a bow only ever used it to tag a mob for pulling, never a source of DPS.

    • 13 posts
    December 29, 2020 3:22 PM PST

    I would have to agree with the posts already submitted here.

     


            The ‘Elephant in the Room’ would probably be how tradeskills are implemented in a game. If there is anything that is better to do for time or some kind of bonus, stats or otherwise, it becomes the only choice. This is one of the reasons Alchemy or Potion making is always the ‘tradeskill to have.’


    It would be better if all Trades had some kind of improvement type of gameplay, mixed with consumable crafts in the top end. However, I know this can cause serious balance issues at the end of the day, while also being hard to scale with future development. . . .

     


            For Skills and Crafts that make armor and weapons they always fall short of dropped gears in games, and are usually the worst to experience, most time consuming, and least rewarding.

    I personally believe that crafting gear and weapons could be very relevant, without killing drop items. This would entail ways to change or modify dropped or looted items as a crafter of that area. A slight stat readjust or stat upgrade that would come the same as enchanting a piece for additional effects.

    OR broken high end things that need a skilled craftsman to repair the item so that you can take full advantage of it as an upgrade, things like this that would make the Trade useful while preserving the ‘loot is best equipment’ mentality that people want to see from MMO’s.

    In this line of thought saying it would be bad because you would not be able to make use of the item immediately is the only negative. I would argue the point tooth and nail that, at least half of the time, you would not want to equip new gear and loose enchants anyway (or some people would not put it on until it was fully enchanted in other words.) Those are the types that would make sure their guild is equipped with an enchanter and some materials if enchanting can be done on the fly, in order to maximise benefits. If you don’t care about Min / Max as an individual or a group then not being able to use a drop right away is a mute point to begin with.  


    Tedium systems sound bad on paper and people like to complain, but hardships and jumping through small hoops are what make things have meaning and depth. I have said it before, but it is my belief that it is much better to have a ‘system of demand’ that people complain about, than having a system or supply that nobody cares or talks about at all. These are the things that separate Player Skill level and give the top tier some bragging rights, while also allowing others room for improvement and growth in the game.


    This post was edited by JonWane at December 29, 2020 3:23 PM PST
    • 83 posts
    December 29, 2020 4:44 PM PST

    @vjek The components for essential potions being so expensive was intentional game design to take money out of the economy. EQ1 had too many inflation problems anyway, the reason those things were so expensive was because it was one of the only money sinks the game had.

    To answer Nephele's question though... it would have to be any tradeskill which has a cost far outstripping the other tradeskills, regardless of the potential for profit later on. For a player that identifies as a crafter and is playing for the crafting experience, it doesn't feel good to play a tradeskill that you have to level up AFTER you make a ton of money adventuring.

    In a system where every tradeskill has the ability to make money, the one that has the highest costs associated with it will be the least rewarding more often than not. In EQ1, Jewelcrafting cost a ridiculous amount of money to level up for not a lot of gain. Alchemy cost similar amounts, though it did eventually pay off with a consistent customer base due to the fact it was a consumable.

    Some of the people above make a good point that gear crafting was rarely reqarding in other games, and what I've seen so far tells me that won't really be the case here. I am eager to see what Pantheon has to offer in this sphere.


    This post was edited by Darchias at December 29, 2020 4:59 PM PST
    • 1281 posts
    December 29, 2020 7:20 PM PST

    I'd say where you would run around to spawn points to harvest resources and just loop in a circle because you know exactly when and where things will spawn. I see harvesting as something more fun of a task for solo players in the overworld to explore and find resources, but defending yourself along the way. And of course, if resources require going into a dungeon, you'll have to bring friends as that is the Pantheon way. But things in the overworld I see as more of a solo friendly content.

    But what I would want to avoid is too much intermixing of harvesting and combat that players in groups are often distracted by or running away from the group to harvest materials. I think the dangerous types of resources deep in dungeons should be fewer and farther between. Maybe a group comes across a resource or is fighting to a resource but I wouldn't want a large chunk of time spent taking breaks so people can harvest. I wonder if there could be separate areas of dungeons which are more gears towards 'harvesting groups' where there may be more resources and less fighting so that I can decide whether or not that's the right group for me.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at December 29, 2020 7:23 PM PST
    • 46 posts
    December 29, 2020 10:19 PM PST

    The least appealing crafting profession for me is every one with useless items.

    As I can remember it was in "Riders Of Icarus". I could start the crafting profession at level 10 and I was able to craft a sword level 10 but the already equipped sword was a quest reward and had much better stats. Selling the sword was also useless, as other players had also better weapons. And as I saw, to craft the next better sword I had to be level 20 and it was a sword for level 20. At this moment I realised that crafting is useless in this game.

    • 612 posts
    December 29, 2020 11:34 PM PST

    I don't like it when a certain profession/tradeskill is tied to specific classes with only a token few items that are useful outside of those classes. For example in WoW Blacksmithing was almost exclusively useful to Plate wearing classes like Warriors and Paladins, Leatherworking was almost exclusively useful to Rogues and Druids... etc... There should be more balance where a tradeskill has lots of uses across the board to all players no matter their Class.

    One way to do this is to not have tradeskills that are too specific. So instead of having Blacksmiths and Leatherworkers perhaps just have Armour Crafter and Weapon Crafter tradeskills. So the Armour Crafter will assemble all types of Armours: Plate, Chain, Leather, Cloth, etc... while the Weapon Crafter will be able to create all types of weapons/shields: Swords, Staffs, Bows, Wands, etc...

    This would also have these kinds of professions making use of a full spectrum of harvested resources instead of other games where Smiths being tied to just Mining and Leatherworkers being tied to just Skinning, etc...

    • 255 posts
    December 30, 2020 3:01 PM PST

    GoofyWarriorGuy said:

    One way to do this is to not have tradeskills that are too specific. So instead of having Blacksmiths and Leatherworkers perhaps just have Armour Crafter and Weapon Crafter tradeskills. So the Armour Crafter will assemble all types of Armours: Plate, Chain, Leather, Cloth, etc... while the Weapon Crafter will be able to create all types of weapons/shields: Swords, Staffs, Bows, Wands, etc...

    I much prefer them being specific. That reduces players being able to make everything. If you have 50 Armours on the server, then all 50 can make evrything and competing against each other for mats and selling items. So the one with the most money would be in the strongest position.  Like the person who can play 16 hours a day and the people who can only spend 4-6 hours are at a huge disadvantage.

    If there are Plate, Chain, Leather, Cloth etc then those 50 are split into each group so there are far fewer people competing for the same mats or customers.

     

    • 1273 posts
    January 2, 2021 10:52 AM PST

    Fishing - because the benefits never felt worth the time spent.  But, like real life, fishing might just be people who actually enjoy fishing.  The ecenomic benefit is not worth the time spent for most people these days anyway (buying fish is a much better option for most people).  So, maybe that's not a problem, just because I don't like fishing in the game doesn't mean other people won't mind just relaxing, chatting, and fishing.  

    • 55 posts
    January 4, 2021 5:29 AM PST

    My least appealing crafting classes are ones that compete vs npc vendors. Why make arrows when someone can just buy 10,000 from a vendor? Why make healing potions that are just slightly better than npc ones? This applies to over abundant quest rewards too. If you get more potions than you need, then no need to find a crafter. 

    My most liked profession is usually leather working until other armor types are too similar. I'm not a fan of extensive gear restrictions, people should choose the gear with the looks and benefits they want. So professions and gear have to have their own benefits and drawbacks to make people want to use them.

     

    The crafting class I choose last is cooking/farming. Both from an economic reason, and personal preference. I like having people show off my gear wearing it. Food and consumables aren't often looked at twice.

    • 3852 posts
    January 4, 2021 7:43 AM PST

    SWTOR. All professions. Sending a companion out to do things for you isn't crafting - crafting is something you should do for yourself.

    Many games - professions that are essentially useless other than at extremely early levels. Where the middle-game gives drops and quest rewards that are more than sufficient to do the content and the late game makes many sources of rewards more useful than crafted gear because "of course dungeons and raids are the only important part of the game so they should be the only way to get good gear. If you do not focus on them you do not *need* good gear so shut up and stop complaining".

    Unlike some opinions above I do enjoy harvesting and think it should be a very significant part of crafting. To me just spending my game life in a building near crafting facilities without actually going out to get the materials I will need is not much fun at all. I want to see the world that VR is spending so much time on even with my crafters or harvesters. Sorry Lucylle, I especially enjoy mining and smithing.


    This post was edited by dorotea at January 4, 2021 7:43 AM PST
    • 392 posts
    January 4, 2021 1:50 PM PST

    @Ranarius Just like with real fishing I enjoy the relaxing part of it more then anything, fun to do while waiting for your raid, the boat or just hanging in a zone.

    @dorotea I beleive they designed SWtoR that way since your player character was "da boss" and delegated work, plus they didnt want it to look even more like a Wow clone.

    • 52 posts
    January 5, 2021 10:53 AM PST

    For me, the least appealing part of crafting is you spend time and effort to achieve grandmaster or whatever level.  But the items you make become useless fairly quickly.  Wow is a perfect example, as is most MMO's I really think you guys should all watch the Anima series Sword Art Online.  In the first story arc they get stuck in this online world, there are many aspects to that series that I think to highlight much of what Pantheon could be.  The way that some players stay in the lower level to be safe but worked to perfect crafting skills and were able to make items for the higher level characters if those players found a rare item that a crafter could make a rare item with.  This represents a living world, WoW represents an expansion the fact they reset all your skills to 0 is proof of that.  I hope that crafting skills allow players to make some of the most powerful items in the game, to me that's a story. So make the items you craft worthwhile at every level.  Also, I grinded forever to get this item.  I use said item for X levels, then I find something I like better.  Likely my item was soul bound so I can not sell it, but I should be able to take to a blacksmith, enchanter whichever depending on what kind of item it is, and have him break it down into things that can upgrade my new sword or be used to forge another weapon assuming I collect or find the right items as I quest.  Just keep crafting a living evolving thing, and make the items useful.  If I have to make 30 swords to level up then they should have some value, to sell because someone may want one or if I want to stand in a noob area and give them out because its an avg weapon quality for that level and noob player would be happy to get their hands on one. Anyways you get my long winded meaning keep Crafting meaningful and interesting.

    • 392 posts
    January 5, 2021 1:45 PM PST

    Does Skyrim count?

    I just made a few hundred daggers till maxed skill then made all the dragon bone stuff.

    • 1618 posts
    January 5, 2021 3:13 PM PST

    For me, I always end up having to craft consumables, which i do not enjoy. While most weapon/armor making skills are great for leveling, they usually fall of near max level. 

    I would much rather make armors over anything else, but rarely are those skills usable at max level.

    • 724 posts
    January 6, 2021 11:11 PM PST

    In EQ, I never even tried Alchemy and Tinkering, since these were race-locked, and I didn't wish to play barbarian or gnome (or make alts with them). Race-locked recipies (like cultural armor) are a different thing and fine with me, but completely race-locked trade skills?

    Similar for class locked trade skills like poison making (never really got to playing a rogue).

     

    • 18 posts
    January 7, 2021 11:16 AM PST

    The worst thing I ever saw an mmo do to crafting was making mining, gathering, fishing tradeskills.  To me those are all harvesting skills. 

    As for what I considered actual crafting tradeskills, I never found any of them boring or my least favorite because I enjoy crafting so much that it's often all I really want to do with my playtime.  EQ2 had a sort of combat system when crafting that kept it fun and interesting.  I really enjoyed that and appreciated that kind of crafting system.  

    • 7 posts
    January 8, 2021 3:55 PM PST

    Every time I approach crafting, I rank professions this way: 1) which one will benefit me the most, 2) which one will net me a profit on the side, and 3) which one will fall off endgame.

    Usually, that leaves the only options for me being someone who crafts food/drink, consumables, and spell advancements.

    In most MMOs that I have played, I always find armor, weapons, and jewelry always to be the least attractive because they don't have a place in the endgame. I wish I knew someway to fix this issue without it affecting questing/world drops/dungeons/raids. I'm not sure if Crowfall is doing this method still but I know it was discussed that items would be assigned random stats. When you crafted a sword that gave you stats you liked on it you could then make a blueprint of the sword and you could only craft x amount of the weapon until the blueprint was destroyed. This made the item valuable to your character and possibly to others when you went to sell it. I could also see it making certain people sought after to see if they still had the blueprint so you could craft them that weapon/armor/jewelry. This just comes down to if you like RNG.

    You would just have to find that sweet spot where the crafted items are not too strong but not too weak compared to other avenues of obtaining them.

    • 1921 posts
    January 8, 2021 5:04 PM PST

    Caiss said:... You would just have to find that sweet spot where the crafted items are not too strong but not too weak compared to other avenues of obtaining them. 

    There are several ways to address this, and while Nephele has confirmed the current public design goal for Pantheon is not to use such a system, one method is:

    You create infinite demand via NPCs.  Each and every NPC in the world has a need, want, or desire, and will always and forever reward players, individually, for supplying that.
    Additionally and/or concurrently, infinite demand for all items, including all crafted items, can be satisifed via a sacrifice mechanic.  It's the same thing, but it's sacrified to a deity, guild, organization, or similar, rather than mechanically handed to an individual NPC necessarily.  Same mechanic, different justification/lore.

    How does it work?  Without crafting, items in the world are created either manually, randomly, procedurally, or thematically per mob type, area, level, or Environment.  The outputs from Adventuring, for example, might produce items with +Heat Resist if taken from a Scorching environment. 

    With crafting, if you permit after-market or post-creation item/object specialization, customization, enhancement or enchantment, then the needs demanded by NPCs/deities/orgs/guilds/etc can not only be infinite, but also dynamic, and if necessary, personally procedural.  What does that mean?

    It means that when you give players the tools to meet the demands, the demands can be dynamic, PER PLAYER.  As in, that deity requires, this week, food with INT as the best social currency rewarding sacrifice.  Next week, that deity requres, from that player, +WIS containers.  Next week? +STR weapons.  After that, who knows?  It can vary by week by player, or it can vary by week for the whole server, based on the NPC. 
    It can also,  if you want to drive a very particular emergent behavior, vary publicly by thresholds that are also temporally dynamic.  This means once the NPC recieves a certain threshold of a certain type of item, they change their mind, and now want a different type of item, entirely different.

    Then, the clever bit.  Every crafting profession produces the after-market and/or post-creation item/object specialization, customization, enhancement or enchantment widgets that go into the sockets/slots/spots on all the items.  So, all crafting professions maintain value at all levels, because they can all produce what all players want.

    If you want to get seriously challenging, innovative and fun?  You have the outputs vary, procedurally, per crafter, based on their own characters personalized recipes.  That allows you to create demand for all items generated from all loops in all other loops, including crafting.  The outputs are all in demand, and now the inputs?  All in demand, but personalized.  One man's trash is definitely another man's treasure, with such a design. 
    It also creates.. for lack of a better term, personality, desires, or behavioral quirks by character.  "You want those skink eyes?" "God no, why, do you?" "Yep, need 'em for my recipes".  "Trade you for skink tongues?".  And thusly, social contact and/or trade is driven.

    Oh, and Unity already supports all of the above, and has for many years. :)

    • 287 posts
    January 10, 2021 12:02 PM PST

    I am not a "crafter" in MMOs.  I'm a raider.  However, in every MMO I've played for more than a year I have maxed out every single one of the tradekills, even the relatively useless ones like fishing, because I'm also a completionist who likes to be as self-sufficient as possible.  The most "interesting" crafting system was in EQ2 but everyone hated it so much that it got nerfed and renerfed until it was just like every other MMO.  Which is to say super tedious, heavily dependent on spending days of /played time gathering and only necessary for a single item in each tradeskill that was beneficial in raiding.  Overall, crafting just sucks but is required for end-game raiding.

    Since the question was which is the least appealing, that has to be fletching.  Arrows shouldn't even be a thing.  Rangers are the only class that is wholly dependent on having to carry (and thus eat inventory slots) some extra item in order to function.  A couple EQ1 classes needed to carry reagents for certain spells but not having them didn't prevent them from playing their class.  Fletching as a tradeskill was always just a lazy additional tradeskill to support a single class that was wholly dependent on it.  Terrible design.

    That is followed closely by fishing.  Seriously, wtf?  How is that a tradeskill?  It's gathering, at best.  It's also entirely useless.

    Crafting systems that try to force players to be more social by making each skill dependent on others are also junk.  Players don't get more social, they level up the other skills themselves to avoid having to wait for others or pay ridiculous prices for the commissions.

    So to address the "how could it be improved" question:
    * Stick with major traditional tradeskills. 
    * Don't make them interdependent. 
    * Base skill-ups on making far fewer items (stop having to make 100 of these, 100 of those, ad nauseum) but of higher significance (less trash product that just gets vendored). 
    * Reduce the amount of time a crafter has to spend gathering. 
    * Increase the amount of time it takes to craft a thing and the amount of time between crafting items. 
    * Make crafting more interactive than clicking a button but skip the whole "risk of death" thing which makes no sense in any tradeskill other than alchemy. 
    * If crafted armor and weapons can't be better than looted items then at least make their stats predictable and changeable along with their appearance; A custom weapon that looks awesome will always be preferable to a dirty looted weapon with similar but less optimal stats.
    * Accept that some rare looted items will always be much better than anything a player can craft (think: crafted by a god, etc)

    Of course this is the opinion of a dedicated raider who will do whatever it takes to maximize their effectiveness in a raid, not that of a dedicated crafter.  A proper crafter will probably see things differently but damn it, raiders are players, too.  So yeah... good luck VR :)

     

    • 470 posts
    January 11, 2021 2:19 PM PST

    For me it really depended on the system. Woodworking in LOTRO may be my least or one of my least favorite. Most of my crafting hatred is directed at systems rather than professions mainly due to the click-it-and-forget-it style systems lazily slapped into many MMORPGs. I much prefer more involving systems like Vanguards that has a chance to complicate and fail or crit and succeed more. By and large I like all of the professions with Blacksmithing of armor being at my top and maybe fletching or woodworking at the bottom. Woodworking I liked better in Vanguard because I could make boat stuff. But I've always veered more towards the armor craft.


    This post was edited by Kratuk at January 11, 2021 2:19 PM PST