Forums » Crafting and Gathering

Which Games Should We Model Crafting After?

    • 84 posts
    February 19, 2018 7:28 AM PST

    Echoing what was stated elsewhere in this thread; I totally agree that a robust crafting/economy leads to longevity in MMOs.  Star Wars Galaxies was by far the best crafting I have ever experienced and I would love to see Pantheon adopt a similar system.

    We still do not know much about how complex Pantheon's crafting system will be.  Hopefully a lot of thought is being put into it, because history has taught us, that it really will make or break the game.

    • 2886 posts
    February 19, 2018 8:21 AM PST

    Trustar said:

    Echoing what was stated elsewhere in this thread; I totally agree that a robust crafting/economy leads to longevity in MMOs.  Star Wars Galaxies was by far the best crafting I have ever experienced and I would love to see Pantheon adopt a similar system.

    We still do not know much about how complex Pantheon's crafting system will be.  Hopefully a lot of thought is being put into it, because history has taught us, that it really will make or break the game.

    If you haven't already, check out the interview I did with Pantheon's crafting dev, Corey LeFever. He was behind Vanguard's crafting system and definitely puts an insane amount of thought into every aspect of Pantheon's crafting system. He shares some of his insight here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qG-RdZBD8


    This post was edited by Bazgrim at February 19, 2018 8:21 AM PST
    • 10 posts
    February 23, 2018 6:43 PM PST

    Hmmm. 

    I liked Everquest's the most from the beginning... where to make a tiger raptor skin belt, I'd have to go kill tiger raptors to get hides (or buy them from other players etc) while shouting that I would buy the yew leaves you could forage in the zone, and dumpster diving the vendors near by for the ore I needed that people would sell to NPCs after exiting a dungeon., then go make subcomponents like studs or bracing etc. and then drag and drop everything in a bag and hit combine.  It made you pay attention, the components were realistic and kind of unique.  You had to have the right molds or patterns and tools...   There were all sorts of different furs and pelts you could make stuff with, from High Quality Lion Skins to Low Quality Wolf Skins etc.  I even had a page on EQTraders once upon a time where I had made a list of all the uses for different pelts in the game.  Then later like in planes of power they just made a bunch of hides and skins that were just cash loot and ruined the whole "everything is useful" method they had for various animal parts.  

    The downside was, besides failing, and besides sometimes it taking 200 combines to get a skill up, was all the drag-and-dropping, sometimes like 7 different items for each combine, and if you got it wrong you'd lose all your materials.  

     

    I didn't like the generic crafting system you got later with every MMO since, where there were tiers of materials and all the items for all the tradeskills were made just using the raw materials gathered from nodes.  The later crafting in EQ was like this, and it was all drop down menus etc.  I don't mind nodes as much vs. killing monsters for materials, but every blacksmithing recipe in EQ2 for example, you just need the basic ore for that tier and a fuel like coal, and you can sit and max out your crafting.  They made it so you got more experience from doing quests than from grinding at the forge.  You used to get bonus exp the first time you made an item, so it encouraged making one of each thing if you could.  Later, you just did writs and maybe a crafting timeline for an xpac and never even made any weapons to put on the market.  

    I'd rather do it the old way with the drag and dropping, than sit at a crafting station and mash the same buttons mindlessly for 5 hours while I watch netflix.  

    I liked the randomness of the materials in SWG, that made it a lot of fun for armor and weaponsmithing.  Finding an amazing polymer or metal and then setting up a harvester to gather it was a lot of fun.  

    I also liked how in EQ2 and Vanguard at one point, there were like 4 different tiers of items you could make.  Like, crude, regular, fine and pristine or something like that, I think vanguard was class A, B, C, or D.  I think they stopped it in EQ2 to save room in their item database (and because they dumbed everything down), but I liked having the possibility of screwing up an item and getting a lower quality one vs. just making the same item every time.  I guess that is sort of like the SWG crafting system too, although that one had a lot more math and more variables involved.  

    • 7 posts
    February 28, 2018 2:15 AM PST
    Vanguard crafting was amazing, model it like that please!
    • 14 posts
    March 1, 2018 12:06 PM PST

    EQ2 is my favorite loved the crafting tabels at the guild hall 

    • 2 posts
    March 3, 2018 11:31 AM PST

    I have played nearly every MMO out there, and I can say hands down that SWG crafting had it right. The simple fact that crafting mats had stats that affected the overall outcome of the final product made it a game unto itself.

    This means that getting a 'sword o' doom' from one crafter could be better or worse than another crafters. It really allowed players to focus on mat gathering and the crafting aspect of the game AS the game. It means that for players who invested the time to get good at crafting, and who spent the time to look for better mats were able to make better items. This drove the player based economy in a way that I have yet to see duplicated.

    If you want 'community' in this game, I can tell you that it existed in SWG. I had an entire network of 'prospectors', people who would survey different worlds/areas for me so that I could always be up to date on what the current materials available were, and where they were at. I had to barter with players to use their 'plots' so that I could erect mining nodes for those resources, or some of them mined it themselves and then bartered those materials with me for cash or weapons. I played SWG with a group of about 8 people and we all formed the biggest (and best) weapons facility on the server. It was a blast to do. Teamwork in the extreme and it was such a pleasant change from 'go here, kill this' gameplay. don't get me wrong, I love slaying baddies and exploring, but it was nice to have another option for fun, rewarding gameplay.

    Vanguard and Horizons also had excellent crafting but still does not hold a candle to SWG.

    • 1860 posts
    March 3, 2018 11:43 AM PST

    Grellk said:

    This means that getting a 'sword o' doom' from one crafter could be better or worse than another crafters.

    I'm not a fan of this type of design.  I'd like to see a player holding a "sword o' doom" and know what that is without having to inspect them to see if they have a good "sword o' doom" or a bad "sword o' doom". 

     


    This post was edited by philo at March 3, 2018 11:43 AM PST
    • 2 posts
    March 4, 2018 2:16 PM PST

    I personally liked original EQ2 Crafting system.  It added so interaction instead of the norm of gather materials and craft with the proper tools and hope the random number generator would be nice to you.  You used various abilitys to increase the how close you were to be finished (progress).

    As well as abilities to increases the overall "quality" (crude, shaped, regular, pristine) of the item..  For example if I was attempting to craft an 8 slot backpack, provided I wasn't horrible and failed outright you would craft some sort of item. The crude would only be a 4 slot. The shaped would be a 6 slot. The regular would be an 8 slot and the pristine would be a 10 slot. The newer crafting system with EQ2 you either make the item or you get back some of the components depending how close you were to making the actual items.  Some items with the new eq2, you could only make the item or fail.

    On occassion you would have to preventive measure to reduce the risk of failing.  Sure, there was a risk of dieing/taking damage or even failing the combine if you mistakenly used the wrong ability multiple times while taking preventive measures but it does have some reality to it.   

    The one thing I didn't like about EQ2 crafting is coming from EQ1 crafting, is you must know the recipe before you can craft it.  You were forced to learn the recipes (quest reward, loot, vendor bought) before you can even attempt to make an item.  EQ1 allowed for experimentation and yes in game did provide random items "books, npcs that guided you on what was needed to experiment to learn these recipes." But, it wasn't a requirement. Especially, recipes used to the higher end stuff.  It also eventually, prevented you from randomly mixing stuff that wouldn't make anything useful together which was a plus.

    • 9 posts
    March 11, 2018 12:12 AM PST

    TO be Honest, I didn't get time in the early games like EQ or SWG. I grew up on the fast track systems in games like WoW, where it was really just a mild side time sink, which was quite dissapointing. Then I got into FFXIV where I fell in love with a complex crafting system. It had it's issues for sure, like how you needed to essentially max all crafts to even be good at one or two, but I enjoyed how it really became a system that in itself you could focus on. I loved the idea of being able to simply be a Crafter, or at the least, a crafter with a side job of adventurer :D 

    many of the systems discussed in this thread sound really good, and I would like to see many aspects of whats discussed in the crafting system. I believe that specialization should have it's rewards, and encourage players to follow a trade. I also think it would be nice to have enough flexibility If you chose, so someone could say, do the basic essentials in many systems, but not excel. jack of all trades, master of none kind of idea. The adventurer who learns how to take care of his gear, but can never really get past your standard solid sword with a keen edge.

    I love the idea of a complex resource gathering system, but I worry about the possibility of too much competition in node and resource acquisition. I can't speak from experience, but I had heard horror stories about players dominating resources in SWG, and I'd hate to see the playerbase being divided due to massive land/resource grabs due to a system that rewards selfishness too much. That being said, they were only stories told to me by others, So I can't say for sure, but it brings to my mind the idea that there needs to be a balance between equal resource acquisition, and a healthy competitive market.

    Since I tend to craft heavily in most MMO's I play, I favor the idea of crafting being an intregal part of the game, and having it a necessary aspect of end game gear. I always hated the feeling that I worked so hard to craft X items, only to find out that they were really a tier below the drops people got in random dungeon runs. crafting should be on par at a bare minimum with world drops, and if it was integrated into those same world drops, it would be amazing.

    A good example of this would be an enhancement system where end game gear wouldn't be at its fullest capacity unless it was also worked on by a master craftsman. adding to that rare materials you would have to quest and research to find. like a rare mineral that can only be found in specific caves in specific regions, and it has to be melded by the master crafstman. then the weapon needs to be smelted in some forge of the gods whilst holding off waves of subterrian minions bent on keeping you from doing it...stuff like that. Epic gear would end up being the responsibility of a guild in cases like that, not just a single players acquisition for that day.

    Either way, I want an involved system that rewards time and specilization, whilst keeping a healthy balance between player access and competition for resources. I want to be able to create a character specifically for the sole purpose of crafting, knowing that my journey will be just as interesting and involved as it would be if I chose the path of adventurer...or perhaps my craft leads me to that adventure. I have to discover that rare mineral after all...


    This post was edited by temjiu at March 11, 2018 12:16 AM PST
    • 168 posts
    March 13, 2018 11:29 AM PDT

    Most of the mmo's I have played have had crafting that was at best moderately interesting. That was perhaps because of no chance of failure which could also represent loss of materials.

    DAoC on the other hand had a few key concepts that made crafting far more involved and interesting. Each result not only had a chance to fail or succeed, each failure had a chance to loose some materials but not an extravegant amount IIRC.  Successful crafted items had variable quality levels. Qualtity levels ranged from 88% qual to 100% qual (aka MP or Masterpiece). Anyone could skill up to such a point as to successfully craft something about 95% of the time but it may take hours and hours and hundreds of attempts to get MP legs or MP boots. It was not a system for the faint of heart and took serious effort to create a full armor set of MP.

    When Spellcrafting gems were applied to modify the stats, there was an opportunity to overcharge the item. If you failed, things blew up. MP quality level gear could hold more stats and had better odds of not blowing up if you wished to chance overcharging. Most everything else about DAoC crafting was on par with many other older mmos.

     


    This post was edited by Dashed at March 23, 2018 8:27 PM PDT
    • 25 posts
    March 13, 2018 2:21 PM PDT

    I really really got into crafting in EQ2 -- not at first LOL -- it WAS awful -- tedious, complicated --  just awful...

    and YES the chemitry table or forge could kill you LOL ...  but ...

    then they changed it --- took ALL the intermediate steps out --  sages no longer needed ink and paper to scribe spells, woodworkers didn't need to first have rough wood and then refine it down, alchemists didn't need to have bottles or vials to make poisons ...  and so forth ....

    AFTER that, I was a huge crafter ---

    EQ2 was my first serious MMO and I loved the crafting ( tried EQ's but never could figure it out, WoW's is just too easy and boring, never played Vanguard's but everyone says it was great, Rift's was ok too, a lot like LotRO imo -- yes I tried it there too ) --- 

    just please please ----- NO intermediates ...  I will not craft if the game has them ( just me I'm strange; had a very good friend in EQ2 who loved it from the very start and was a big crafter in Vanguard)

     


    This post was edited by Einelinea at March 13, 2018 2:21 PM PDT
    • 4 posts
    April 5, 2018 2:24 PM PDT

    I have crafted in every MMO I've ever played, and it's by far the most rewarding part of the game for me (so much so that I ended up with a crafting quest item named after me in Everquest), so how Pantheon deals with it will be very important to how much I will enjoy the game.

    I think my favourite crafting system so far has been Vanguard - it felt like a proper, weighty alternative pursuit to adventuring. You had to work hard to be good at it. You had to quest (by crafting) to learn things. The "mini-game" crafting process actually made you feel like you were making something from start to finish which was a nice change to other games, and wasn't something you could just churn out on autopilot, as it would make you pay for mistakes. I loved making Ships and Furniture and Houses! I really, really hope that Pantheon goes down a Vanguard-esque path for crafting, to make it a substantial activity in its own right. One thing I did dislike though was that to make top tier ships you had to go on an adventure raid- boooo!

    Everquest 2 crafting was fairly engaging, as again it felt like you were engaging in actually making something. This was much more simple than Vanguard's system though and was easy just to grind out mindlessly. Vanguard was far superior. I feel Everquest 2 did the "placement" of items inside playing housing better than any other game.

    Everquest was where I first started crafting and while it was a great passion of mine for many many years, to be honest it was hell as often as it was fun! Manually picking up and placing materials becomes very rough on the wrists after the 100th combine. The recipe book system from later on was an improvement to that side of things, but at the end of the day you were just clicking a button to produce an item, so aside from making constituent parts it didn't feel much like actually crafting anything.

    World of Warcraft, again, is just clicking a button and the item is made - simple, but lazy and unrewarding. Many other games have gone down this route, and it's not one to replicate.

    Anarchy Online had a vertical learning curve and involved combining many things with many other things to eventually arrive at a finished item - better than WoW, but again not very much like making an item.

    The Secret World didn't have what I would really call a crafting system. You could just arrange materials of varying quality in a grid and come out with different items. Different, but unrewarding.

    I see a lot of people are fans of SWG crafting - I never did play this game.

    Looking forward to seeing how this pans out, but also kind of nervous. Big expectations!

    Xanthe

     


    This post was edited by Xanthe at April 5, 2018 2:27 PM PDT
    • 1 posts
    April 9, 2018 12:03 PM PDT

    FFXI's crafting was the only one I personally consider even remotely relevant.

    Every other MMO I have played made crafting an afterthought for most players because dungeons would drop everything you wanted. Crafting was pretty much mandatory since most mobs did not drop any gear. You could buy a lot of the standard gear from NPC's, but they would not have any stats aside from more armor. They were also insanelyexpensive since the money you could make on your own was very limited.

    Food was mandatory with the insane stat boosts they provided.

     

    The harvesting nodes were highly contested which means a lot of materials were not only rare, but quite costly. They were also in highly dangerous areas that even level capped players would have a hard time dealing with on their own. 

     

    All the best gear in the game was craftable, with the end-game content dropping unique materials to craft some of the best gear available (and there were many side-grades that provided horizontal progression for different situations as opposed to bigger numbers).

     

    I thought it was a perfect system for any MMORPG. 

    • 40 posts
    April 9, 2018 3:47 PM PDT

    Starwars Galaxies was by far one of the best crafting systems, that game did the best at seperating players and making it feel like you had a class and a job. It also did a really good job at making the job you were doing seem unique (As if everything was hand crafted by you) and no one else could mimic your work.

     

    Runes of Magic had the best Armor/Weapon crafting system. Essentially you would kill mobs for armor or weapons which had stats on them, you would then destroy them item and remove the stats so you could place the stats on another piece of armor you chose to wear. These stats would come in all sorts of combinations and varieties so you could make that ideal piece of armor with perfect stats assuming you put in the time and patience to make it the way you wanted. Most importantly there was a 0% chance to fail or break the item, the only thing working against you was human error, so there was no punishment from trying to + up an item too many times like in some of these newer games.

     

    As for EQ it was a decent simple system which at the time did well for what it was. My favorite things about crafting in EQ was the ability to craft spells with components you found along the way, or the fact that you needed an enchanter to enchant bars for jewel crafters. Both of these things brought people together.

     

    So a quick recap,

    Unique materials

    Customizable Armor/Weapons

    Cross job crafting

    • 31 posts
    April 16, 2018 2:30 PM PDT

    I loved crafting in SWG and in EQ1, but I prefer a skill based crafting where automation cannot succeed. I loved the crafting of Vangaurd and EQ2 (early EQ2) where you have actual skills and need to pay attention to get the best results. I find that crafting that is just a click with a die roll can really detract from the importance of seeing a perfect crafted armor/weapon, and thus can truly add value to the craftsman. 

    Having quality of item directly related to only quality of resource leads to a mass economy of resource farmers exploiting crafters; however, if two crafters given the same quality resources can pop out two completely different quality items just based on the level of the crafter and the time willing to dedicate to the craft is TRULY what I think the crafting community would want. Earn a name for yourself for the quality of your work. No different than earning a reputation as a great raid tank/healer, or top PvP player.

     

    Agga

    • 6 posts
    April 17, 2018 8:56 PM PDT

    While I have played many different MMOs, I have never been satisfied with crafting in any of them.  I have heard that SWG is great, but never played it so I can't say.  What I can say is that I have been keeping track of another game in development, Chronicles of Elyria.  The crafting description by them looks very involved and interesting.  Each item takes multiple steps to create and it's not "click and done". . . it's a basic mini game for each step with variable results depending on how you perform and your crafting skill level.  My opinion is this would be interesting, though it may be asking for a bit much.


    This post was edited by Radiance at April 17, 2018 8:57 PM PDT
    • 7 posts
    April 19, 2018 10:25 PM PDT

    Talint said:

    Vanguard: Saga of Heroes crafting was by far the best crafting in a game I have ever played.  If Pantheon creates a crafting system like that I will be in heaven.  Please Mr. McQuaid.  Bring it back.

     

    Post is over a year old, but it's still true. I've played my fair share of MMORPGs, and nothing has ever come close. It wasn't a mindless and monotonous repeat of "MAKE ITEM, MAKE ITEM, MAKE ITEM," you had to put some conscious thought every time you crafted something.

    • 432 posts
    April 23, 2018 10:55 AM PDT

    temjiu said:

    Then I got into FFXIV where I fell in love with a complex crafting system. It had it's issues for sure, like how you needed to essentially max all crafts to even be good at one or two, but I enjoyed how it really became a system that in itself you could focus on. I loved the idea of being able to simply be a Crafter, or at the least, a crafter with a side job of adventurer :D 

     

    I can only loudly concurr .

    I am also  crafter type player and I did them all - EQ1 and 2 , UOL , Vanguard , SWG, Anarchy OL (excellent crafting system btw), WoW, SWTOR, TES etc .

    FF14 has I think by far the best crafting system because they hit the right compromise between a too great complexity on one extreme and the primitive click to combine on the other . Every single crafting attempt is different in FF14 because one has to adapt the strategy to what happened in the process . The quality of ressources has an impact on the probability of high quality products . One has to think during the craft . The crafting actions are numerous but not so that it feels like rocket science . There are crafting quests and some of the crafted items are as good as the best dropped items . The UI is perfect and one sees that they invested much time in the crafting UI concept .

    Last but not least there is an incredibly active players' economy such that I have never seen in another MMO and it is mostly driven by crafting/gathering players .

    Actually the FF14 crafting is so good that I can't see what could be changed to make it better and I hope that Pantheon will take some inspiration from it .

    • 84 posts
    April 23, 2018 8:25 PM PDT

    Deadshade said:

    temjiu said:

    Then I got into FFXIV where I fell in love with a complex crafting system. It had it's issues for sure, like how you needed to essentially max all crafts to even be good at one or two, but I enjoyed how it really became a system that in itself you could focus on. I loved the idea of being able to simply be a Crafter, or at the least, a crafter with a side job of adventurer :D 

     

    I can only loudly concurr .

    I am also  crafter type player and I did them all - EQ1 and 2 , UOL , Vanguard , SWG, Anarchy OL (excellent crafting system btw), WoW, SWTOR, TES etc .

    FF14 has I think by far the best crafting system because they hit the right compromise between a too great complexity on one extreme and the primitive click to combine on the other . Every single crafting attempt is different in FF14 because one has to adapt the strategy to what happened in the process . The quality of ressources has an impact on the probability of high quality products . One has to think during the craft . The crafting actions are numerous but not so that it feels like rocket science . There are crafting quests and some of the crafted items are as good as the best dropped items . The UI is perfect and one sees that they invested much time in the crafting UI concept .

    Last but not least there is an incredibly active players' economy such that I have never seen in another MMO and it is mostly driven by crafting/gathering players .

    Actually the FF14 crafting is so good that I can't see what could be changed to make it better and I hope that Pantheon will take some inspiration from it .

    Final Fantasy 14 has a lot going for it (Glamour system is well done and the music is absolutely top notch).  The crafting is interesting, but not as interesting as Star Wars Galaxies.  The issue I have with Final Fantasy 14 crafting is that there is just not enough variety of inputs and outputs.  To state it more clearly, you have 2 kinds of each item, regular quality and high quality.  So there is really no way to 'make a name for yourself' in crafting.  In Star Wars Galaxies, really no two items were ever identical.  A gifted crafter could always inspire to eek out just a little bit of a better item than a previous attempt.  That was the hook that kept gamers engaged and it was what caused buyers to seek out known talented crafters.

    • 1315 posts
    April 26, 2018 6:12 AM PDT

    philo said:

    Grellk said:

    This means that getting a 'sword o' doom' from one crafter could be better or worse than another crafters.

    I'm not a fan of this type of design.  I'd like to see a player holding a "sword o' doom" and know what that is without having to inspect them to see if they have a good "sword o' doom" or a bad "sword o' doom". 

     

    First off sorry for the semi necro quote Philo but reading your post popped a thought into my head both in agreement and disagreement.

    I can totally get behind that the “Sword o’ Doom” should always only have one set of stats.  In fact all “named items” should only have one set of stats attached to the semi unique item skins. 

    What I would like to see though is that crafters cannot make “named items”.  Named items have lore and status as well as unique appearances.  As such it is not realistic for a PC to duplicate a Lore item and they would be restricted to quest rewards and named mob drops. 

    That is not to say that a crafter cannot learn from studying/salvaging a named item.  I would love to see something along the lines that for every 10 salvages of an item a crafter of the appropriate skill can learn one property of the named item.  Named items may have many different properties from material type, visual style, speed, resistance penetration, procing powers and the like.  In fact all items will have some of these but named items will have the most.  These properties are ranked in order of value and you cannot discover a high value property until you have discovered all the low value properties on the item.

    The benefit is that all these properties are tracked against all the items a crafter studies.  As such you could learn the material and style properties from almost any generic weapon of the same type dropped by mobs.  Once you have mastered the material and style you can learn the speed boost and resistance penetration from magical versions dropped by simple named or elite mobs.  The next tier of properties would only be found on named items. 

    As an exampled the “Sword o’ Doom” is a black obsidian, Ratkin hilt-less great sword, that is forward balanced (higher damage, lower attack speed and more stamina drain) that penetrates crystal damage resistance.  The “Sword o’ Doom” also has the “Terror from the Dark” proc which is a mind effecting fear effect attack rating reduction.  Once you have Salvaged enough basic obsidian weapons you learn how to craft obsidian weapons.  When you have salvaged enough ratkin hilt-less great swords you can craft ratkin hilt-less great swords of any material you know.  Forward Balanced can appear on magical 2 hand swords, maces and axes, once you have mastered Forward Balance you can begin learning the treatment required to make a weapon crystal cutting.  Multiple named weapons around Terminus will have “Terror from the Dark” which is a proc that can be applied to a crafted weapon with the added component of a Shadow demon core that is greater than or equal to the quality level of the rest of the materials.  Once you have salvaged enough droped weapons with “Terror from the Dark”, that you already have discovered all previous properties, you will be able to learn the method of adding Terror from the Dark to an appropriate weapon.

    All properties of the final product and the quality of the materials will affect the final skin of the item as well as the final stats of the item but will otherwise have a fairly generic look.  In this way it may be very difficult and costly to learn to duplicate the stats of a named item but eventually it could be possible to make a non lore based duplicate, possibly even of higher quality than the original if you are duplicating a level 15 named item with level 50 skill and materials.

    I would love to see more of a composite crafting system with design trade offs rather than a strict  A+B+C = D recipe system.  A Named item that perfectly matches your play style will be better than what you can craft at your level but in the ranges where no named items drop you can use crafted items that are appropriate.  This method of salvaging to learn a crafting style will also take a lot of named items out of the economy which will keep their value higher.

    • 98 posts
    April 26, 2018 11:09 AM PDT

    I think Vanguard did the best job of making Crafting require enough of the player's attention that it became a true fully-formed horizontal progression system.

    I'd really love to see Crafting Specializations that created more space for individuation.  That is, instead of having every level 50 Armorsmith (with maxed out skills) able to make every Armorsmith item (that they had the recipe for) at the exact same quality, I'd prefer to see an Armorsmith be able to specialize in a particular Mold type (boots, legs, chest, etc.) and/or a particular Metal type (iron, steel, mithril, adamantine).

    • 9 posts
    April 28, 2018 8:59 AM PDT

    My two crafting games that are combined would be amazing is Vanguard and Elder Scrolls Online. For me, I want to craft items that can be and are different than all other crafters in the same field. ESO you can visit different crafting station that will give different stats to your item and a different look. I also like to be able to experiment with crafting say like I found a strange rune or scroll I can melt into my crafted item and get an unknown effect and look the first time but from then on have it as a recipe. lastly, I like it when players can teach each other crafting or languages like we could in eq by sitting together. and sharing knowledge   

    • 27 posts
    April 30, 2018 6:02 PM PDT

    I devoutly hope crafting means you can, with help, create some astounding things. I'd love to make something besides vendor-fodder and skill points. 

    I *loved* the aspect of SWG where you could patiently scout out the plac for your harvesters to garner some high end stat materials, or you could gaher any low level crud for grinding. I also greatly enjoyed that you could tweak the recipes and templates to suit your vision of how an item should end up.

    Some of Vanguard's system was great, some good, I had mixed feelings about it.

    EQI was a button mshing drudgery until recently with create all.

    WoW felt like a money sink, not  path to viable gear/products.

    Things I've ner liked:

    Gathering/Crafting restrictions. I can build a house, bake a weeding cake and make the gown. My vision of being able to craft is is I invest my time and energy and resiurces I can become as good as my time and willpower allow me to. That said it doesn't hav to be a gimme.

    Production bottlenecks. I think the best example of this was Alchemy in EQII. If you didn't have an Alchy alt, you may as well forget about crafting as the matrket spiraled out of control in very short order.

    • 44 posts
    May 1, 2018 6:00 PM PDT

    Honestly I like EQ crafting because it was quick and simple, not fancy and cumbersome. Well I did fletching and you could do that anywhere so thats why I liked it. But, I do understanding the crafter need or may want something more than that. So, I leave it into your hands and I will just have to adjust and learn.

    • 74 posts
    May 2, 2018 6:11 PM PDT

    I really enjoyed black desert's crafting system. I thought it was enjoyable to make beer and basically pay my workers in beer to go gather wood or ore. :)

     I feel the important part is that items crafted through the crafting system should be difficult to make and viable.

    I also feel that gear progression alone can be the death of an MMO.

    The game needs more substance then just .. "I want my black dragonscale boots!". Then you get them and they are nice and all but within a few hours everyone is like.. "yah that's nice but when are you going to get the next best boots?!"

     

    :(

    ~ CaffeineInjected ~


    This post was edited by Caffeineinjected at May 2, 2018 6:16 PM PDT