Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. IMO, its crafting system was so very good (im avoiding the word revolutionary because this was my first mmo so im not sure about games before this) Everysingle MMO ive played since Vanguard hasnt even come close to half the depth of vanguards crafting system. In fact, its the only game ive ever even bothered to do any type of proffession in. Is it really that hard to set something like this up? There are so many possibities with systems like this. I love it and i want to see more. So far my only hope is Darkfall, and i havnt heard anything about crafting in that game.

Originally posted by w8ing

 Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. IMO, its crafting system was so very good (im avoiding the word revolutionary because this was my first mmo so im not sure about games before this) Everysingle MMO ive played since Vanguard hasnt even come close to half the depth of vanguards crafting system. In fact, its the only game ive ever even bothered to do any type of proffession in. Is it really that hard to set something like this up? There are so many possibities with systems like this. I love it and i want to see more. So far my only hope is Darkfall, and i havnt heard anything about crafting in that game.

First off i'm also looking forward to Darkfall, so far the little bits i've read about crafting put it on par if not a little better than current MMOs.

As for in depth crafting in general, well.  i swore 2 years ago not to return to my first MMORPG due to certain changes, but i have gone back to it as it still offers the best crafting system compared to EVERY MMO there is..  Star Wars Galaxies..

I always thought the crafting system in EVE was pretty cool. Lots of stuff, a great deal sell on the market.

The first rule of a good crafting system is for all production to be managed and directed by players.  Of course you must have a stable natural economy in place to begin with.

Originally posted by ironore

The first rule of a good crafting system is for all production to be managed and directed by players.  Of course you must have a stable natural economy in place to begin with.

simply put, yes

Originally posted by ironore

The first rule of a good crafting system is for all production to be managed and directed by players.  Of course you must have a stable natural economy in place to begin with.

Agree.  Of course, I'm just an MMO player, so my perspective may be a little off, but it seems like MMOs are missing two things here:

1) Player driven economy.  Most MMOs completely negate crafting by having ridiculous loot.  Other MMOs only create a small, specific demand for player crafted gear.

2) Lack of depth in the crafting/harvesting system.  First problem is setting up crafting as a secondary advancement line, instead of a unique class or build.  Second problem is having an overly simplified crafting/harvesting system.  Harvesting, you just follow your GPS to the blinking node, then mash your "give me money" button.  Crafting, you just combine the reqiured items and wait for the *ding*, no room for creativity or challenge.

Unfortunately, it seems like most players and developers now think all of this is just "fluff" that can be trimmed to save time and resources.  Gotta make room for more awsomely repetitive combat, entirely pointless combat...

I'm going to use Star Wars Galaxies as my example here, but not to sell you the game, just to spur ideas on crafting.

Star wars galaxies has a very rich crafting system as well (which was dumbed down quite a bit with the NGE).  The crafting part, which was different for each crafting class, was more like a mini-game than just a screen where you drop materials and hit a button to make something.  Some items took quite a while to make, and you could make crates of items in personal factories which might take days to finish.  For example, a batch of Rocket Launchers took multiple factory runs for making components, and I think the last time I made them (a couple years ago) it took me 3 days due to manufactring time. Now that may seem ridiculous to students of the current generation of MMO's but it's not.  Because items like rocket launchers were so hard to make, very few people bothered.  Those who did were rewarded with a ton of money from sales, and a loyal customer base.

Recently the devs reintroduced, by popular demand, a sytem which is a cross between the old Creature Handler and  Bio-Engineer classes called Beast Master.  The act of actually gathering the required items, dna, resources, and then incubating an animal, is an entire mini-game in itself. There is a ton of room to customize yoru creatures based on the manufacturing process, including size, color, and the creatures stats.  Creating a creature is not an easy thing, and I think it's a shining example of how much more immersive crafting in general should be in games. Here is a brief writeup of it which does not cover the comsumables which need to be created by other crafting classes.

http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/content.vm?id=66936&resource=features

It's not every day I can point to a *current* system in SWG that I can applaud, but the Creature Incubator crafting system is better than the original SWG Bio-engineer class, and should serve as an inspiration to game developers in my humble opinion. It's also important to note that this new Beast Master system basically replaced two of the Classes that were ripped out of SWG when the NGE game update came along.  Beaster Master is not a class now, it is a profession that any class can dabble in for using creatures, and traders can pursue creature creation as part of their crafting class.

Crafting has become boring, and I truly believe that this, and a complete lack of other rich non-combat/social system has pushed a potentially untapped base of players almost completely out of the genre.  SWG and other past games with richer crafting systems had a community of people who didn't have the slightest care for the combat part of the game, but focused on resource gathering, crafting and trade.  These people have been left in the dust during the past several years.

I tend to want both aspects in my game play.  In SWG I had crafter only toons and combat only toons, and depending on my mood, I would choose which one I wanted to play.  The reason this worked though, was because non-combat systems were as rich as combat systems. I received a complete and fulfilling gaming experience no matter which I decided to play. Crafting now seems to be an after-thought tacked on the current generation of games toward the end of the development cycle. Just enough crafting to make a bullet point feature for the retail box.

Originally posted by Tatum

Originally posted by ironore

The first rule of a good crafting system is for all production to be managed and directed by players.  Of course you must have a stable natural economy in place to begin with.

 

Agree.  Of course, I'm just an MMO player, so my perspective may be a little off, but it seems like MMOs are missing two things here:

1) Player driven economy.  Most MMOs completely negate crafting by having ridiculous loot.  Other MMOs only create a small, specific demand for player crafted gear.

2) Lack of depth in the crafting/harvesting system.  First problem is setting up crafting as a secondary advancement line, instead of a unique class or build.  Second problem is having an overly simplified crafting/harvesting system.  Harvesting, you just follow your GPS to the blinking node, then mash your "give me money" button.  Crafting, you just combine the reqiured items and wait for the *ding*, no room for creativity or challenge.

Unfortunately, it seems like most players and developers now think all of this is just "fluff" that can be trimmed to save time and resources.  Gotta make room for more awsomely repetitive combat, entirely pointless combat...

 

Well, one of the reasons why players see crafting as fluff and a big reason why a completely player ran economy can't work is because crafting is dull.

You can add all the crafting options you want but most people see crafting as completely dull, they would rather be cracking orc skulls, they may do it on their spare time but they will not dedicate their play time to crafting as would be needed for a player ran economy.  And the more you rely on players to gather and make everything the more mundane activities you create in the game, which few people will want to do leaving big voids in the economy.  Because part of the problem is expecting realistic behavior in an unrealistic setting.

Especially if players have to operate their own shops and such, no one wants to sit there all day waiting for people to stop by.

I think for an in game economy to work it has to be able to operate on its own, without player involvement, so that when players do participate in the economy it is already stable.

That is why I think NPCs should have some economy logic, be able to track changes in supply and demand and make, buy and sell items on their own, while being able to alter what they make and demand.  And for player ran shops have NPCs tend the store so players can go do more interesting things.  So when players do make things they already have a fully functioning economy to work with and if players do not fill out all the niches needed in the economy then it isn't that much of an issue because NPCs will, this way players can add to the game economy but their involvement will not make or break it.

And if you want to get players more involved in crafting then you need to add more creative options, and not just options as to what statistics are on the item I mean that is usefull but not something that people get excited over, visual options I think would do the most to attract people to crafting, not only making a good chest piece but making one that looks good too.  And also make it so that players can make most anything in the game for variety and extra fun.

So for those that truely love crafting what would your top 4 games be ?

I suggest you guys to look up Atlantica Online. It has this crafting feature that let players to pretty much craft almost every item in the game, provided that you have enough skills and materials in hand. One good thing about crafting is that you wont spend to much of your time hunting for specific items but gives us an additional option to craft it ourselves.

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Well, one of the reasons why players see crafting as fluff and a big reason why a completely player ran economy can't work is because crafting is dull.

You can add all the crafting options you want but most people see crafting as completely dull, they would rather be cracking orc skulls, they may do it on their spare time but they will not dedicate their play time to crafting as would be needed for a player ran economy.  And the more you rely on players to gather and make everything the more mundane activities you create in the game, which few people will want to do leaving big voids in the economy.  Because part of the problem is expecting realistic behavior in an unrealistic setting.

Especially if players have to operate their own shops and such, no one wants to sit there all day waiting for people to stop by.

I think for an in game economy to work it has to be able to operate on its own, without player involvement, so that when players do participate in the economy it is already stable.

That is why I think NPCs should have some economy logic, be able to track changes in supply and demand and make, buy and sell items on their own, while being able to alter what they make and demand.  And for player ran shops have NPCs tend the store so players can go do more interesting things.  So when players do make things they already have a fully functioning economy to work with and if players do not fill out all the niches needed in the economy then it isn't that much of an issue because NPCs will, this way players can add to the game economy but their involvement will not make or break it.

And if you want to get players more involved in crafting then you need to add more creative options, and not just options as to what statistics are on the item I mean that is usefull but not something that people get excited over, visual options I think would do the most to attract people to crafting, not only making a good chest piece but making one that looks good too.  And also make it so that players can make most anything in the game for variety and extra fun.

Fair enough.  But, you could say the same about MMO combat...it's extremely dull and repetitive at times.  I mean, we have to be honest here, combat has always been a weak point in MMOs.  That's wy it's never made sense to me for MMOs to focus so much on combat, especially when the only goal of combat is xp, that's how you end up with a grind.

Personally, I've never been into crafting, but I did finally realize why it's neccessary.  Crafting creates an economy and an economy creates niches for other play styles.  With out that economy the game is reduced to just one play style with no real purpose.

Crafting sucks in all MMOs I ever played. They just focus on how you craft, not on the product you craft.

I want to customize everything about an item, like colour, skin (preferably mix together different parts like you could do with the GM tool in Neverwinter nights), effects, name and so on.

Now I just make the exactly same crap as everyone else.

If my ork only want to craft red items he should be able to do that (Red is faster, really)... Why does a character who crafted he's own gear looks exactly the same as anyone else who made their own? Boring.

Originally posted by Tatum

Fair enough.  But, you could say the same about MMO combat...it's extremely dull and repetitive at times.  I mean, we have to be honest here, combat has always been a weak point in MMOs.  That's wy it's never made sense to me for MMOs to focus so much on combat, especially when the only goal of combat is xp, that's how you end up with a grind.

Personally, I've never been into crafting, but I did finally realize why it's neccessary.  Crafting creates an economy and an economy creates niches for other play styles.  With out that economy the game is reduced to just one play style with no real purpose.

Oh yeah definately let the players craft everything the game has to offer so you can get the more niche players but I would not rely on those players doing everything needed in the economy themselves, the difference between player driven and player ran.

I would not go so far to say all production should be done by players like Ironore said, but players should be able to to make everything.  Precisely because crafting is niche, and an economy that depended on players making everything to run would required many people to dedicate themselves to crafting and many people to fill out all the little niches in the economy, not to mention they would need to play frequently.  That is a tall order for somethign that does not have large appeal.

Plus if combat people get PvE to play with adding crafting and buying NPCs would be like PvE for crafters.

You're both right on that one.  There needs to be some room for creativity and challenge in crafting.  I think that having to play mini-games and being able to combine different components for different appearances, stats, and cumulative effects would make a big difference.  Actually, that's the reason I've never been into crafting myself, because there's no room for creativity.

There's an interesting dicotomy in MMO's that makes a good crafting system even more delicate to create than combat balancing.

In any MMO, you have PvE. The typical reward for PvE is items. The ability to create a comprehensive system which allows crafters to make items that matches the quality found in PvE encounters, while at the same time not compromising or rendering the efforts of PvE encounters obsolete, seems to be an exceedingly difficult task.

It also follows that some degree of PvE will be required to craft. Along with harvesting, how do you deal with the PvE encounters? Do you have a seperate skill set for crafting? Do they draw from the same skill pool? Are they completely seperate? How much PvE is required to obtain rare resources, anyway? Can you only find rare resources on high-end PvE mobs? 

To summarize incase my previous statements weren't clear: How can you balance items attained through PvE with those that are crafted, without accentuating or rendering the efforts of the other moot?

Actually, a crafting scheme that I really liked was what was in UO. You needed to harvest large amounts of resources to skill up and create items. The addition of properties with AoS opened the door for a whole new level of crafting, which is being carried to it's logical conclusion with the introduction of Imbuning in Stygian Abyss. It's an amazingly deep system with multiple facets that require entire character skill pools to do more complicated things. I'd love to see their system impleneted in another game.

And another problem is the methodology of how to craft and harvest in such a way as to make it interesting. I always thought it'd be interesting if the act of crafting somthing brought up a minigame like UI you needed to "play" in order to craft the item you wanted.

Suppose, for example, that I want to craft a sword. Right now, in most MMO's, it does a skill and material check, and then you have a chance to craft the sword with various degrees of success (Item quality, attributes, etc.). Now, suppose I click craft a sword, and a minigame like Bejeweled pops up. Depending on the materials, skill level, desired properites, and item I wish to craft, the minigame would be more or less difficult to "beat". You'd have a set amount of time, and depending how well you did in the game determined not only weather or not the item is created, but also the quality. This would make it far more interactive, but I also imagine, VERY difficult to program, because it has to be a game within the game to avoid possible scripting or player How-To's that gaurntee success. 

Although, that would open up crafting to the casual market in a big way. Think how big Bejewled, or even Peggle is in the casual market.. Now imagine if your skill in Peggle determined the items you could make in WoW.

Hello crack.

 

My two cents… I won’t argue that crafting isn’t dull for some players or even most players. However that fact can work in favor of a game. I think I would force players to commit to crafting in order to be a top notch crafter even to the determent of their combat skills. I would also make crafting take a good bit of effort. These two things combined with the fact that crafting is inherently boring would reduce the number of crafters substantially. At the same time I would make crafted items by far the best in the game. You could also require items to be repaired by crafters with the skill level to make them. Now you have a real market crafters and crafted items.

Now some might say that this vastly reduces the incentive for PvE. However I don’t think this would be in fact true. First off you could make the cost to make the best items high. The money has to come from somewhere so the incentive for PvE would still be there. The only difference is instead of getting a drop directly you save your cash and go buy it. In addition you could have certain items require components that are only available though PvE encounters. The best items require higher level components from the hardest encounters.

Now the only issue is balancing all these factors to make the system work.
 

Damn, polypterus beat me to it, lol.

But yea, I agree.  PvE drops should be materials/components, rather than "sword of uberness +6".  That adds an incentive to PvE and sets things up so that crafters are reliant on harvestors and fighters for their materials.  In this type of game I don't think any character should be self sufficient.  Harvestors and fighters need crafters and crafters need harvestors and fighters. 

Also, I agree that the best crafters should be the ones that have dedicated their character towards crafting.  For that, you definately can't have crafting as a secondary form of progression. 

Again, I've always liked the minigame idea, especially if it has a significant effect on the quality of the product.  But, you might have a hard time selling that idea to some of the hardcore RPG crowd...

I would still preserve the concept of gear drops though.  Finding gear is fun, if you only found supplies then it would put a damper on the fun of pure combat characters.  You could even have a salvage ability to turn gear into its conponents if you found gear you do not want.

Like in my idea all gear is balanced anyway so there isn't any uber loot, so when you find special gear the only thing that makes it different than crafter gear is that it has a design that no crafter can duplicate, but it isn't going to make you automatically win fights.  And crafters are still needed to rebalance the gears stats and repair it whether dropped or crafted.  Rebalancing, repairing gear and making it in the first place all require reasources which are gathered at nodes, which are captured and protected by combat characters.

One thing I was thinking about was at character creation you could pick between combat and crafting characters, so if you wanted to focus on crafting you could and it would encourage focus.  But I am not so sure because for the players that do both it might be a pain to have to switch between combat and crafting characters.

 i like the idea of having exclusive weapons/armor drops by certain boss mobs meant to be reached by a group through a dungeon or whatever you wanna call it. but as far as drops by random mobs i like the idea of crafting supplies being dropped

Originally posted by Tatum

You're both right on that one.  There needs to be some room for creativity and challenge in crafting.  I think that having to play mini-games and being able to combine different components for different appearances, stats, and cumulative effects would make a big difference.  Actually, that's the reason I've never been into crafting myself, because there's no room for creativity.

yes.

I totally agree!

Most need a "salvage" skill to take leather or say ivory from monsters. The crafting system needs to have a nice minigame.

I'm thinking about doing that to the game i'm making (look at my sig), but I have no idea what minigame it should be. One way to solve this problem would be the most common drop is materials (like in Fiesta), but gear may drop, but it's rare, and not MS rare.

While I still advocate totally player run economies, I see it being supported by the possibility to hire and maintain NPCs to do the higher scale or more boring jobs (running the shop 24/7 etc.)  They are still under the direction of players, though I don't rule out the possibility of NPCs who are given no direction acting for themselves to meet their basic 'needs' and in fact I see all mobs/monsters as this sort of AI.  They should have goals and if intelligent harvest resources and build villages and weapons.  

So their drops are not just components, but also what they themselves have made, but it didn't come out of thin air, they had to come by it the same as anyone else.  In fact they may even have quite good stuff that was looted from destroyed player villages and such. 

The point is that the economy is a natural system with everything coming from somewhere.  This is what creates the many niches of interaction. 

Some worry that player run economies won't always have everything running in full swing as we have come to expect, but that would really be the whole point.  There would be different situations in different areas and at different times.  This even creates economic incentive for fighters to clear dangerous areas for settlement and for crafters to relocate to remote outposts in order to bring their products to players who have previously been in a situation where most things were hard to come by, and at the time that was a fun and challenging aspect of their game, but perhaps they are ready to move on to some different interactions as civilization comes to the borderlands.  Of course if they don't like that they move farther out into the frontier.

Originally posted by ironore

While I still advocate totally player run economies, I see it being supported by the possibility to hire and maintain NPCs to do the higher scale or more boring jobs (running the shop 24/7 etc.)  They are still under the direction of players, though I don't rule out the possibility of NPCs who are given no direction acting for themselves to meet their basic 'needs' and in fact I see all mobs/monsters as this sort of AI.  They should have goals and if intelligent harvest resources and build villages and weapons.  

So their drops are not just components, but also what they themselves have made, but it didn't come out of thin air, they had to come by it the same as anyone else.  In fact they may even have quite good stuff that was looted from destroyed player villages and such. 

The point is that the economy is a natural system with everything coming from somewhere.  This is what creates the many niches of interaction. 

Some worry that player run economies won't always have everything running in full swing as we have come to expect, but that would really be the whole point.  There would be different situations in different areas and at different times.  This even creates economic incentive for fighters to clear dangerous areas for settlement and for crafters to relocate to remote outposts in order to bring their products to players who have previously been in a situation where most things were hard to come by, and at the time that was a fun and challenging aspect of their game, but perhaps they are ready to move on to some different interactions as civilization comes to the borderlands.  Of course if they don't like that they move farther out into the frontier.

That makes more sense, I thought you were trying to place the entire functioning of the economy squarely on the shoulders of the players, ie make them tend shops, mine ore all day etc.  all the dull things that no one will want to do.

NPC helpers are a great idea, you could even have to pay them wages so they will not leave you for a better job, and equip them with new tools and such.

I was actually thinking of a similar design, meaning NPCs will independently capture and gather reasources to make items which they use.  Of course players can do that too or even work with NPCs.  Holding a reasource node is a constant struggle with other forces.

There is no problem with mobs dropping items.   There's more function than just I have gear now.

There's 'proof' that I did this.  I have memories attached to this piece of gear.  And the socialiness attached to it.

_________________

Crafting and PvE-loot are only opposed to each other and get in each others ways because developers litterally want them to.

To start with when you pick up an 'epic' piece of gear you mostly just unlock that gears special bonus (all Gear from this quest line/MOB grants a combat ability, or give +X health, if you completed the quest line/took out the MOB).  The default status of the gear only has one set of stats, which pretty much limits the value of the gear.  

Of course even epic gear will eventually degrade just like any other item. 

This also means that you can make all epic gear tradeable.  HOWEVER only the people who have actually completed the quest/mob will be able to use the bonus that the gear grants.   (We're not worried about gold farmers in this design because we designed the game knowing there would be that problem).

In the case of raids you could easily make it so that only one piece of gear is dropped, HOWEVER everyone who participated unlocks the ability to use that piece of gears bonus.

___

However you can do a few things to epic gear. 

The first thing thing is tear it apart to get the crafting design.   With that design you can make as many pieces of gear as you want, and with whatever stats you wanted if you knew what you were doing.  Under most conditions the gear would be worse than what you started as however if you excessively worked on a single piece you could make it better.

The second thing you can do is tear it apart and get extremely rare crafting componets.  one of which will be an enchanters stone that lets you add the gears special ability or special stat to a normal piece of gear.

(in both the cases above you would have to go through a small but repeatable quest/ritual to add the last bonus.  However it wouldn't be something you would do casually and on a whim)

Or sell it off to whoever wants it.  to use it for whatever they want.

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Originally posted by ironore

While I still advocate totally player run economies, I see it being supported by the possibility to hire and maintain NPCs to do the higher scale or more boring jobs (running the shop 24/7 etc.)  They are still under the direction of players, though I don't rule out the possibility of NPCs who are given no direction acting for themselves to meet their basic 'needs' and in fact I see all mobs/monsters as this sort of AI.  They should have goals and if intelligent harvest resources and build villages and weapons.  

So their drops are not just components, but also what they themselves have made, but it didn't come out of thin air, they had to come by it the same as anyone else.  In fact they may even have quite good stuff that was looted from destroyed player villages and such. 

The point is that the economy is a natural system with everything coming from somewhere.  This is what creates the many niches of interaction. 

Some worry that player run economies won't always have everything running in full swing as we have come to expect, but that would really be the whole point.  There would be different situations in different areas and at different times.  This even creates economic incentive for fighters to clear dangerous areas for settlement and for crafters to relocate to remote outposts in order to bring their products to players who have previously been in a situation where most things were hard to come by, and at the time that was a fun and challenging aspect of their game, but perhaps they are ready to move on to some different interactions as civilization comes to the borderlands.  Of course if they don't like that they move farther out into the frontier.

 

That makes more sense, I thought you were trying to place the entire functioning of the economy squarely on the shoulders of the players, ie make them tend shops, mine ore all day etc.  all the dull things that no one will want to do.

NPC helpers are a great idea, you could even have to pay them wages so they will not leave you for a better job, and equip them with new tools and such.

I was actually thinking of a similar design, meaning NPCs will independently capture and gather reasources to make items which they use.  Of course players can do that too or even work with NPCs.  Holding a reasource node is a constant struggle with other forces.

SWG had "vendors" which were usually  NPC's that you could put items and clothes on to match whatever the theme of your shop was.  You still had to maintain the items in the vendors NPC's, and you had to pay to keep them going (sort of like paying an employee).

By the way, this is where player housing comes in.  I think the current concept of instanced player housing needs to be totally reworked.  In most games, you can't even craft items in your own home, let alone sell items there.