Developer feedback request, Crafting and mining: What are the essentials?

[osric]

i wish i had more constructive suggestions, or at least more specific ones... but all i can say at the moment is that crafting should be open to everyone, there needs to be a wide variety of craftable items, and it should be meaningful. by meaningful i mean that crafted items should be on par with the best of the looted items, if not better. looted items should fill in gaps, not become the only viable option.
and the crafting systems should involve each other. not in the beginning, because that's just a pain in the rear... but higher level items should need things other crafters make. i.e. Warhammer of Doom needs mostly weaponsmith ingredients, but needs leather for it's handle and maybe something from alchemy as a catalyst to inbue the item with its special powers. this creates a cycle of interdependence that not only fosters cooperation and spreads out the wealth, it also provides items crafters can make using a small number of ingredients that will help increase their skill a bit quicker. ya know, if you just want to get your skill up, then why use your 10 ore to make an axe and get 1 skill point, when you can use it to make 5 iron bands for woodworkers and get 5 skill points

i guess i basically just described WoW's system with some improvements. many more items to craft, different styles to choose from, socketing, using different ingredients to change the stat bonuses, and having crafted goods that really make an impact on the game.

i really dont mind the branching as you go up in skill lvl idea, makes for more of the basic items, medium amount of medium items, and much fewer of the top end items. since by the top each person is only making top tier axes, or swords, or heavy armor instead of all of those things.

oops, long post... and i'm making it longer now... geez.

[goatus]

Crafting is IMO very important part of gameplay and can be gamekilling or gameloving feature for many players.

Most important thing in good crafting system is that it shoud be fun. Clicking 100x on a buton and watching progres bar for few minutes isn't really interesting.

So the question is, how do you make it fun? IMO you can make every single step in crafting item, armor, or weapon, have some cool feature implemented that would make it unique everytime. Even if you craft same item 10 times or so. Here are some ideas:
-Painting armors, you don't even need players to have full controll over it, just adding few kinds of paint + few very rare and option to mix them woud be awsome.
-Adding some extra glow or particle efects, lets just say via runes or other magical means, you could even experiment by combining difrent runes. Ofcourse there could be also posibility of "overglowing" item which would end in it blowing straight into your face, possibli killing you and damaging item.
-Tossing in some extra rare resources to rise item stats a bit (not very meaningfull but just to make difference)
-Enchanting items (like in wow, yah) which would add some extra characteristic to items
-Possibility of getind difrent results depending where you craft? Or maybe chance of critical succes (crafting extra quality item, extra rare)

etc etc

Another important thing is resource gathering, some players just like to do it. Go into wildernes and mine some ore or search some herbs. Making it exciting woud really add fun factor to whole crafting system. Like you could have some events that have chance of firing when someone uses resource node. Ie mobs ambush gatherer or you find some extra treasure or stuff like that. You could even make strong mobs that gather around certain resources which would make gathering them group oriented activity.

And yet another important thing is, crafting shoud be meaningfull. It means stuff that comes from crafting shoud be on par with items from other sources.

[RavenRain]

Well coming from Lineage2. I like the idea of crafting items in game, it was a great way to make some money. What I did not like about Lineage was the amount of mats it took to craft any item. I remember the first time I got a drop which was a sword blade thinking cool I can make some quick money with my mats. Only to find out it took 12 sword blades to make 1 sword not to mention all the other mats I did not have. Lineage2 takes to much to craft leading many to become discourged.

[lyankyj]

i hope it wiil be the most complex one of all mmo's..or at least like in wow/lotro

[Kira]

Originally Posted by Mark

In none of the MMORPGs I've played, except for EVE, have I mined or crafted anything. I did mod a couple weapons in GuildWars, but I prefer to leave real crafting and mining to everyone else in any given game. It's boring, especially in EVE. Why sit there watching your ship/character mine some rocks when you could be out adventuring? Having fun? Getting cool drops instead of crafting your own? Just my $0.25.

That's exactly the point.
We take for granted that crafting should be something made for making stuff compared to drops, getting a prize for have done alot of boring stuff (just like grinding).
Imo crafting should be something related to a quest line, or made for exploration purposes, and not walking on the same spot in order to find "15 blossom of the holy godly goldy flower".

Personally, the time of old mechanism like UO crafting should be over, WoW put the limit of it.
Imo in new-gen games this mechanics should be different (if you wanna make a very good game), and understanding to create a new and original way to approach a game mechanic.

I know this game is made by Koreans, but... do we wanna play another Korean game?

[Stoney]

I have played most MMO's that are around today, and I still think the crafting in SWG did it right. There wasnt the tediousness of gathering resources like some other games, like EQ2, you could set up your mining station walk away and go about playing the game and come back later and remove your resources. I also like the experimentation process where you could change certian stats of the armor/weapon by putting more points into certain categories. Resource quality and crafter skill should make a difference in the quality of the final product. Also i believe high end crafted weapons and armor should be superior to looted, but as in SWG these items took rare resources and/or looted components to make. Items should also have decay, no item should last forever no matter how rare or normal it is, but there should also be a way to repair them. I posted about this some before, here is a small quote of some of my other comments:

Originally Posted by Stoney

I want items in game to not all be the same, I want my armor or uber sword of death to be better then someone elses armor or uber sword of death because it was made with better materials, I dont mind if they look the same as long as they are slightly different. Now dont get me wrong I dont want my sword to be so powerful that I am a PvP god, but it should be alittle better then the econmy version made with normal components.

I dont want a system exactly like SWG, but I do think that you can create a system that has the same diversity. Every weapon/piece of armor shouldnt be clones of each other, they should be unique in quality. Sony created one of the best crafting systems to date, and I hope that Aion devs can create a system even better.

[Ezekio]

I'd personally like to see a crafting system which:

A) Is more fun to progress - more than just one click!

B) Lets users customise stats of weapons slightly (or alot-perhaps depending on craft level) for example leaving a sword in a forge for a few seconds longer would increase its sharpness - damage but reduce its durability as its more likely to snap. This would let players find their favourite balance.

C)Encourages playerrs to interact more, kinda like EVE whereby members of guilds ("corporations") have to carry out different tasks- designing,mining,crafting, selling etc. If you think realistically, a sword is unlikely to be made just by a blacksmith, engraving, crafting a good handle etc would be done by other proffesions... A bit more interaction would be nice!

wow sorry long post. :s

Or not so long it seems.

I like the idea a few posts back about customising the aesthetic side of things more - colours, textures, glow effects etc. this would have to be done realisticly htough with earthy colours. A neon pink suit of plate mail is a favour on no ones eyes!

[srinknorei]

warning. long-winded. from my experiences, the crafting system i would create would work as follows:

crafting would be a sub-class or thing you chose, not a class all of its own. you would choose your production type (weapons, armor, clothing/accessories, potions, etc) and your means of procuring materials (mining, skinning, herbalism etc)

crafters would be able to make new items based on recipes they acquired. there would not be a crafting leveling system (debatable, of course. i just don't like the idea of wasting materials grinding)-- you simply acquire recipes from looting, quest rewards, npc retailers, etc. i would say you would need to do quests in order to gain special abilities associated with your chosen crafting line. for instance, you do a quest and you learn the ability to add sockets to your armor. another quest allows you to add better base stats, or allow you to modify your crafting components directly in your inventory before you use them for crafting.

materials can be both harvested form the earth (by hand) and by looting your kills. special components to make weapons and armor etc even better could also be looted from kills or discovered hidden in a pile of dirt, treasure chest, etc. components could also be made by crafters.

the material amounts needed to make your crafted items wouldn't be an absurd amount. you don't need 5000x thread, 2500x leather or 500x gold. it would be absurd--and NOT fun--to kill a monster 8000x times in the hopes you'd get what you needed--or skinning all 2500x creatures after you've killed them. also, after a moderate amount of looting and pillaging, you might get some nice component drops. the producers of AION said they want to dispense with such an awful grinding experience and that should also extend to crafting. enough with super low drop rates (.005 percent?! come on.)

i think there should also be a component system for making final items. you buy thread from an npc. you gather your leather you skinned. you sew from that thread and leather some uh.. leather.. cloth (i don't know what to call it >.<). there would be an equal conversion rate 1x thread and 1x leather = 1x 'leather cloth.' all items made would go towards a final product, in this case, say, a leather chest piece, which would require say, 10x 'leather cloth' and 4x 'buckles' and 2x 'padding.' each component either made by the crafter themselves, or bought from another crafter, or looted. higher or better items would require a little bit more and maybe some special components.

during construction, you could use the skill you learned from your crafting quest, and in this case, add sockets to the leather chest piece. furthermore, after production of the item, you could further customize its color with dyes you would by from an npc retailer. a different dye would be needed for each section, say, the body of the chest piece itself and its offset pattern or trim.

players could then take components they looted and put those into the sockets to either add to the base armor value, stat value, or something that might modify an ability of that player's class.

looted components could also be used during the initial creation of the chest piece, to say, replace a player-crafted one that might not have any stats or stats that were of little contributing value. this would furthermore create an even more powerful item from the start, even before socketing. if an item needed say, 2x 'padding,' the player would need to loot 2x pieces of special 'padding.' the player spends a little while killing and looting until they loot 2x pieces of 'padding,' those pieces of 'padding' having a higher rate of damage absorption than normal crafted 'padding.'

even further, say you want the extra absorption of the 'padding' to be one that absorbs unholy attacks. you would then need to loot 2x of some item that repels unholy attacks--or buy the item from an npc--like 'holy water,' right click and apply the holy water to each piece of 'padding' (of course, as i said, you would have needed to do the quest first to have the ability.) if you can modify the component from the inventory, it lets you. i borrowed the example from leo for the holy water so now the item has a base for both the usual armor absorption rate, and the special added protection against unholy attacks--from the start--before socketing.

what if you want the item to have a higher durability? you could go with the standard 'buckles' or you might loot a component to make those buckles even better form the start. or you might loot the nicer buckles to begin with. say then, you could loot a recipe that would allow you to make the buckles better so you didn't have to go out and loot the special buckles anymore.

durability is another issue all together. i would say you could buy repair kits for in-field usage, or when you return back to town, go to an npc to repair your item. i don't like the idea of items being unusable after a certain point.

as a side note--managing recipes needs to be very thorough with categories and sub categories to find things much easier. filters too. to arrange by level, component, or item.

loot and crafting. personally, i love the idea of crafting, but i understand the drive for loot. i think loot should compliment crafting in any game-- not be the means to an end for the end game. hell, i even love the idea of being able to take items off your foe and reverse engineer them. it could be a random loot recipe drop off whatever the foe had on him visibly. potentially what you could make from that loot would be better than what you looted initially. you could loot his boots, his chest piece, his sword, his hat, his necklace or ring as a recipe to either use for yourself, or sell to another crafter. (i would so love for all jewelry to be visible on characters.)

[Axels]

Originally Posted by srinknorei

loot and crafting. personally, i love the idea of crafting, but i understand the drive for loot. i think loot should compliment crafting in any game-- not be the means to an end for the end game. hell, i even love the idea of being able to take items off your foe and reverse engineer them. it could be a random loot recipe drop off whatever the foe had on him visibly. potentially what you could make from that loot would be better than what you looted initially. you could loot his boots, his chest piece, his sword, his hat, his necklace or ring as a recipe to either use for yourself, or sell to another crafter. (i would so love for all jewelry to be visible on characters.)

Yes this is needed...uhm quick question, why do mobs that have no need for humanoid weapons and armor...drop humanoid weapons and armor?

come on people, have you ever seen a dead snake, rat, cat, dog, aligator, etc. drop a sword?

I know I know this isn't reality but seriously, if I got the 'Sword of Blood' from a pink flamigo....I would be wondering wtf?...what was a pink flamigo doing with this thing? Taking over the world? getting rid of some leftovers that the last adventurer to attack it had? or...(and the most likely of outcomes) was it just trying to look cool while opening a pickle jar?

anyway...back on topic. crafting(need I say anymore? Yes I think so)

crafting...crafting...CRAFTING....to craft something for the pleasure or use by one or a group of people. I would think you would need some type of skill involved unlike L2's give a dwarf a ton of materials and *poof* there's your item thanks to the dwarf's mp points...uhm a dwarf uses mp points to power his/her crafting...so when he/she makes a pair of "Boots"...is it magical? cause i don't see any pluses on it...in fact it looks like the pair I just bought from the shop(at a lower prise as well, Oooo doesn't that hurt little dwarfy? it should I just made your skills useless, but I guess you have a reason to grind now, don't you? ^_^ I'm happy to make you work for my convenience)

Uhm..could we make it easy for people to start crafting? maybe? possibly? in the next 20 years or so?

Maybe we could reward people for trying to make a great new item? you know instead of blowing it up in their faces, or costing them way more money than it should take to upgrade their made items?

well I'm rambling on but that's just 10 % of the stuff that just pushes my buttons about today's MMORPG(you know when you put it in caps it makes it look really important, oh well)

/crazyperson off

[lyankyj]

I love your idea, Srinknorei!

I wanted to post a similar idea.

Harvesting + Looting Materials from mobs.
I prefer Harvesting btw.


I hope my english is ok and understandable, sry, if its not.

"why do mobs that have no need for humanoid weapons and armor...drop humanoid weapons and armor?
have you ever seen a dead snake, rat, cat, dog, aligator, etc. drop a sword?"

Good question, which can be solved with this: (+the crafting thing too)
u wont collect armors, weps, etc from mobs, just different types or colors of crystals. Each type is for a different stuff (red ones - armor, green - weps..)
If you collect just 1, u cant do a thing with it, only if u collect a specific amount of them. For example: a low lvl char can forge 3-4 crystals (from the same type) together, and after double-clicking on it, you get a random stuff (armor if its a red one...) which is suit for ur lvl.
When you specializing a prof, you can increase the number of forgeable crystals (if u spec in blacksmithing, you can forge more red (armor) crystals, etc). More forged crystal = better weps...
So you could loot these crystals, or after you choose a crafting prof, you can harvest a specific type of them too..

+ you could add some other liquid to the forging process, determine the properties of the crafted stuff (skin, durability, etc)

[osric]

i dunno, i really like getting my Sword of Blood from a pink flamingo. i don't question his motives, maybe he was a mercenary flamingo... who knows, but i like loot drops. and if you only have armor and weapon drops from humanoids then nobody will go after the other ones and just camp the humanoids, effectively creating their own bandit-hunter camp directly next to the "bandit camp"

[Exode]

Crafting, is pretty much two main things,

Harvesting,

and of course Crafting, (Blacksmithing)

I think the essencial (woo I spelt that wrong!) things should be included, which are simply Armor and weapons. But one that that attracts a large audience is Accessories, People in genral are MATERIALISTIC!! Being that by human nature World of Warcraft was able to catch many people in the engineering and Tailoring system, creating many different colors, and Pointless, yet Enjoyable accessories, is almost a MUST is you want to keep the audience entertained and pulled to the game. Having Different types of Craft is important as well! Being able to make stuff is cool, But having max lvl/skill all the recipies in one skill is lame. Simply because of the reason of having, LIMITED Items, which brings us back to the point of people being materiallistic! Having different types of crafts is a must. such as, Metal working (Black Smith) Cloth, (leather worker ect) Acessories, (which should be extras in each catagorey) Even Carpentering (for Homes ect) Potions and other enchantments should also be avaible to Magic users.
Harvesting, Should also be done in many ways, Quest rewards, Mob drops, Plants, Rocks, NPC stores, Destroying Item drops.


(IMO and sorry to say, DROP THE HARVESTING SYSTEM IN L2, Make it mob drop ect or quest, should solve alot of problems, and make the crafting of items reasonable, in terms of materials needed, and percent rates should be demolished, ive never seen nor heard of any one losing EVERYTHING from messing up a sword, ect. But as far as recipies go, have LOTS Pointless, somthign that looks good, is useful, rare, different Graphics, attract many as well. Different looks& weapons with Many different stats = Intrest to explore and gather, and CREATE, Materialistic!

Just a few ideas I had on the topic.

[teldath]

i think basic harvesting is always a good time waster, yes a time waster, when you can just pop on for 10 minutes and harvest its good, mabye as long as you dont have to walk to far to get to a harvesting spot.

some good harvesting skills are...

Minning
Lumberjacking
Harvesting
Fishing

fishing is by far the most popular, i think a game w/o fishing would be lacking.

i think some other cool, more major crafts would be.

inventor- mabye you could invent new armor, or new ways to link the chain mail, and sell the recepies to blacksmiths.

Blacksmith- duh, its in every game for a reason, its popular, no reason not to have it, change the name though.

Scribe- i think being able to craft enchanting scrolls would be cool, or creating a new spell, that mages could use, a new Heal, it could give your Race and advantage. ie.

the Choosen just gained the ability to