Developer feedback request, Crafting and mining: What are the essentials? - Page 3

Bythos · 03-20-2007, 01:16 AM

I know this idea may come as a blow to the hardcore crafters here, but why not make crafting depend on actual skill instead of point placement and random chance of success?

Hear me out...

Have you ever tried to make leather clothes or pound out a steel breastplate? Even if I went to college and read every book about it, I would still not be very good at it until I get lots of practice. While I could stitch together something wearable, I would need to hone my skills before I could produce anything worthwhile.

I think crafting in current games is boring and requires very little in terms of in-game ability, being on par with level grinding. If there was a way to require actual skill by the player to craft these items, I think it would be much more interesting.

I envision a sorta mini-game that takes minutes to learn but years to master, right now it is like the console games Frequency, Amplitude, and Guitar Hero in my mind. After the player acquires all the right materials and recipes?, they must 'build' the item, by hitting buttons at the right times or something like that. There could be multiple paths to take with each contributing a certain stat bonus or upgrade to the base item. As the player acquires more complex recipes for rare armor, the challenge would increase as would the benefits and options available.

In addition, bonus abilities could be given as players progress in the game, similar to power-ups to make it somewhat easier to build.

Of course, the actual mini-game could be something completely different, but would still require ability on the players part, just as a high level character not only needs the hp and mp that comes with leveling up, but the ability of the player that got them there.

Just my two cents...

Tal Rasha · 03-20-2007, 04:09 AM

I like a crafting system such as in WoW. The mining on the other hand... I would have to agree with a lot of others in this thread that gathering the required materials for crafting is a very boring task.
Perhaps make it so that you need other crafting skills to create required materials from more easily available raw materials.
And don't forget dyes. Creating an armor and choosing your own color for it will add a lot of diversity.

Ipmia · 03-20-2007, 04:25 AM

gathering ressources can be fun if you have to fight for them ^^

Monarch · 03-20-2007, 04:31 AM

I'll be honest... I don't craft for the most part.

I do, however, spend plenty of time making lots of cash from everyone who does! I figure: I go out and get lots of resources to sell to crafters. Later on, they make a cool item and I buy it with all the money I earned from them. In the end, it always evens out.

I don't think there is a whole lot for me to add to this kind of discussion, as crafting has never interested me. But I know that there are some folks out there who consider it to be a huge part of an MMO experience.

Ether · 03-20-2007, 07:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bythos

I know this idea may come as a blow to the hardcore crafters here, but why not make crafting depend on actual skill instead of point placement and random chance of success?

Hear me out...

Have you ever tried to make leather clothes or pound out a steel breastplate? Even if I went to college and read every book about it, I would still not be very good at it until I get lots of practice. While I could stitch together something wearable, I would need to hone my skills before I could produce anything worthwhile.

I think crafting in current games is boring and requires very little in terms of in-game ability, being on par with level grinding. If there was a way to require actual skill by the player to craft these items, I think it would be much more interesting.

I envision a sorta mini-game that takes minutes to learn but years to master, right now it is like the console games Frequency, Amplitude, and Guitar Hero in my mind. After the player acquires all the right materials and recipes?, they must 'build' the item, by hitting buttons at the right times or something like that. There could be multiple paths to take with each contributing a certain stat bonus or upgrade to the base item. As the player acquires more complex recipes for rare armor, the challenge would increase as would the benefits and options available.

In addition, bonus abilities could be given as players progress in the game, similar to power-ups to make it somewhat easier to build.

Of course, the actual mini-game could be something completely different, but would still require ability on the players part, just as a high level character not only needs the hp and mp that comes with leveling up, but the ability of the player that got them there.

Just my two cents...

That actually sounds really good if you ask me. Not only because im a fan of mini-games, but i'm a dead fan of crafting. I'd be that guy who would risk going for that extra enchantment to make something special. However since all the crafting i've done in previous mmorpg's were completely luck based - the reactions I would get are "you're crazy" or "sif why cant luck be on my side for a change".

Maybe I'm hoping for too much, but I really like this mini-game idea =D Of course there would be actual level restrictions (like the old craft system, something like "you need lvl 7 craft to use this recipe") but instead of making the entire crafting process luck based, the mini-game would provide a more fun way that would implement mainly skill and some luck (high level crafting means a very difficult mini-game, which somehow involves luck to an extent)

Sorry for my lack of clarity but i'm just tired. omg crafting mini-games <3

Anuxinamoon · 03-20-2007, 07:27 AM

Orrr you could take the skill idea even further and have to beat the sheet of metal into the armour itself. Realtime deforming polygons from direct player controlled imput. Same goes for decorating your amour aswell! So when you used a horn of giant raging demon to stick on your amour; you actually get the item in 3D and decide the best place to put it on your amour for maximum defense and little penalties =D

That is a game within a game really =/ in 10 years time it shall be so ! >

Saito · 03-20-2007, 08:52 AM

Yeah... that reminds me of lineage 2 dark elfs... they can have heavy armor and only have a small part of their *** and ****s protected but still gives them full p.def! :P

Mark · 03-20-2007, 09:14 AM

Small little blurb, sorry if this has already been asked: Why can't crafting be a minigame of some sort?

Darkbishop32 · 03-20-2007, 10:41 AM

I think Star Wars Galaxies had one of the best crafting and overall economies in MMORPG. No grinding involved just maintaining of harvesters.

vbchic · 03-20-2007, 11:17 AM

I would like to see a crafting system where the person crafting it is able to embed their own personal symbol onto their work. Like how Lineage2 has the system of making your own tags, use this system to make your own symbol for what you craft. That way each piece can be unique to the person who makes it.

On top of that I think the armors should be able to come in random colors so we all aren't looking a like. Like once it is crafted you will get a random colored armor, or have dyes that are able to stain the armors like in Guild Wars that would work too.

gr4vity · 03-20-2007, 11:19 AM

I have played so many MMORPGs, I think Lineage II crafting methods and item gathering from mobs is the most solid from all.

PS. Mining/skining/etc/etc are useless and not fun. (imo)

Ipmia · 03-20-2007, 11:29 AM

Quote:

I have played so many MMORPGs, I think Lineage II crafting methods and item gathering from mobs is the most solid from all.

PS. Mining/skining/etc/etc are useless and not fun. (imo)

the only thing i liked in L2 was the sieges machines crafting feature... i'm not a "crafter" but it has to be something someone that LIKE it can spend hours doing just that if he feel like it and still have fun.

Myz · 03-20-2007, 11:53 AM

I certainly -- CERTAINLY -- hope that, given Aion's ability of flight, that the location of mines, as well as the materials / minerals that can be mined / harvested, will be EXTREMELY different, and perhaps even challenging to collect.

skimike · 03-20-2007, 12:05 PM

I hated all crafting until EQ2. While I didn't care for the gathering of resources and the interdependencies of different crafting classes on each other (it was a big problem when the game first launched but I am told it was changed for the better sometime after I stopped playing), I enjoyed the 'combat' mechanics involved. I'll always remember the day a forge 'defeated' a guy who was crafting next to me. It exploded and he died. The forge was fine but he wasn't so lucky, as witnessed by his corpse laying on the ground next to me.

1. Make crafting something people want to do for fun, not something they have to do to progress.

2. Open crafting up completely; if you and your buddies slay the Evil Dragongod Vista and he drops the Guantlets of Ubar Sparklies, some crafter, somewhere, once upon a time, managed to craft them. Players should be able to discover the formula and, if of appropriate skill level, should be able to have a reasonable chance to craft them as well.

3. Crafters should be able to create items with a reasonable chance of success. Nothing's more frustrating than being maximum level in crafting and having a 1% chance of success, failing, and having all the items used be destoyed in the process.

4. Don't destroy items if they cannot be combined to create something useful and a player attempts to combine them - tell the player he's an idiot and that he can't mix Mithril and Spinach to make the Sword of Popeye.

5. Player-crafted items should be on par with dropped loot through the end-game with equivalent difficulty to obtain the components necessary to craft said equivalent item.

6. Drops are more fun than begging from crafters. It's not nearly as much fun to kill a bunch of mobs and get components for an item as it is to kill a bunch of mobs and get the item. We're living in the age of instant gratification. Just go with it. Make components that are drops secondary in nature; the 'good' loot should always come first. I don't know why this makes me think of Nagafen raids before there were any original EQ expansions but it does. Red dragon scale? Hmm. Gathered components could be gathered over time and then crafted into the same legendary drops from the mobs.

7. If a player reaches some sort of legendary crafter status as in point #2 above, the player should be able to create his or her own formulas that can be unique and tagged with the player's name. It might take more space in a relational database to store unique items versus pre-canned ones but disk is cheap and, if the server design is good, unique items do not have to mean wasted memory (not so cheap).

8. If I'm making a Sword of Static Electricity and I happen to do it during a thunderstorm, maybe I get lucky and get a bonus applied to the sword.

9. I'm not sure how you make mining fun but I can say FFXI did not do it well, with bots just running from spot to spot, mining all the points like mad. Once you start making boring elements like mining, people start making tedium reducers like bots. If you have mining, that probably means that it'll take hours of repetition to mine needed components. In my own personal case, as a person who works a full-time job with oncalls and has a family, that's time I would have to spend not adventuring. As my time is precious, I can tell you I'm not going to waste it running from spot to spot with a pickaxe for 4 hours a night while my friends are out slaying Big Bad Nasty #10.

Crafting I can at least see as a viable part of the game but mining resources just sucks. I don't want to come home from a day at the office, take care of whatever chores need to be accomplished, play with the kids for a couple hours, put them to bed, and then log on to experience the...mindnumbing boredom of chopping down 3,276 trees necessary to build a small wooden box.

Darakus · 03-20-2007, 02:12 PM

Crafting is to me a creation process and as such should give the impression of being free (for those of us who have quite the creative mindset) while also being set (for those of us who would like to create but can't really visualise their creation).

I would thus like for us to be able to manipulate the result of our crafting process, for example with Iron, Carbon, Leather and Ivory in a forge and given a hammer I could make a sword and it would be the standard result of that recipe in said environment but given the ability to manipulate the end result my sword could be anything from a longsword to a bastard sword to a dagger thus giving me creative latitude despite having made sure that someone without any creativity could still come up with a result.

Go one step further and allow proportions of ingredients to influence the end result or quality and you can have a system that will have fixed setups for the base users but almost all latitude for the dedicated ones.

Where the acquisition of ressources is concerned I'm of the mindset that like in real life the means to acquire them should be diverse and include non fighting methods for those pacifists among us, mining being one of those methods should be included but that said and as we are supposed to be a magic race we most likely should have found ways to make that tedious process less annoying and time consuming like spells to locate minerals, to extract them as well as manipulate them. Of course if the way of spells is chosen for the collection of ressources the success rate should be high for those common ressources (so as to allow everyone to have a start) but low for those rarer one that just so happen to be naturaly resistant to magic.

Anyway these are just my two bits

03-20-2007, 01:16 AM	#31 (permalink)
Bythos Subscriber Join Date: Nov 2006 Legion: Genesis Race: Elyos	I know this idea may come as a blow to the hardcore crafters here, but why not make crafting depend on actual skill instead of point placement and random chance of success? Hear me out... Have you ever tried to make leather clothes or pound out a steel breastplate? Even if I went to college and read every book about it, I would still not be very good at it until I get lots of practice. While I could stitch together something wearable, I would need to hone my skills before I could produce anything worthwhile. I think crafting in current games is boring and requires very little in terms of in-game ability, being on par with level grinding. If there was a way to require actual skill by the player to craft these items, I think it would be much more interesting. I envision a sorta mini-game that takes minutes to learn but years to master, right now it is like the console games Frequency, Amplitude, and Guitar Hero in my mind. After the player acquires all the right materials and recipes?, they must 'build' the item, by hitting buttons at the right times or something like that. There could be multiple paths to take with each contributing a certain stat bonus or upgrade to the base item. As the player acquires more complex recipes for rare armor, the challenge would increase as would the benefits and options available. In addition, bonus abilities could be given as players progress in the game, similar to power-ups to make it somewhat easier to build. Of course, the actual mini-game could be something completely different, but would still require ability on the players part, just as a high level character not only needs the hp and mp that comes with leveling up, but the ability of the player that got them there. Just my two cents... __________________ Mark - "Then along came some bananas..."

03-20-2007, 08:52 AM	#37 (permalink)
Saito Subscriber Join Date: Nov 2006 Race: The Chosen	Yeah... that reminds me of lineage 2 dark elfs... they can have heavy armor and only have a small part of their * and **s protected but still gives them full p.def! :P __________________ Power is needed because conflict will never disappear.

03-20-2007, 09:14 AM	#38 (permalink)
Mark Administrator Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Jacksonville, Florida Character: Mark Legion: AionSource.com Race: Undecided	Small little blurb, sorry if this has already been asked: Why can't crafting be a minigame of some sort? __________________ Administrator AionSource.com I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge. -Seneca

03-20-2007, 10:41 AM	#39 (permalink)
Darkbishop32 Human Join Date: Mar 2007 Race: The Chosen	Good ideas I've seen before I think Star Wars Galaxies had one of the best crafting and overall economies in MMORPG. No grinding involved just maintaining of harvesters.

03-20-2007, 11:17 AM	#40 (permalink)
vbchic Daeva Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: MO Race: Undecided	I would like to see a crafting system where the person crafting it is able to embed their own personal symbol onto their work. Like how Lineage2 has the system of making your own tags, use this system to make your own symbol for what you craft. That way each piece can be unique to the person who makes it. On top of that I think the armors should be able to come in random colors so we all aren't looking a like. Like once it is crafted you will get a random colored armor, or have dyes that are able to stain the armors like in Guild Wars that would work too. __________________

03-20-2007, 04:09 AM	#32 (permalink)
Tal Rasha Daeva Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: The Netherlands Race: Undecided	I like a crafting system such as in WoW. The mining on the other hand... I would have to agree with a lot of others in this thread that gathering the required materials for crafting is a very boring task. Perhaps make it so that you need other crafting skills to create required materials from more easily available raw materials. And don't forget dyes. Creating an armor and choosing your own color for it will add a lot of diversity.

03-20-2007, 04:25 AM	#33 (permalink)
Ipmia Daeva Join Date: Feb 2007 Race: The Chosen	gathering ressources can be fun if you have to fight for them ^^

03-20-2007, 07:27 AM	#36 (permalink)
Anuxinamoon Daeva Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Brisbane , Au. Character: Almalexia Class: Ranger Race: Elyos	Orrr you could take the skill idea even further and have to beat the sheet of metal into the armour itself. Realtime deforming polygons from direct player controlled imput. Same goes for decorating your amour aswell! So when you used a horn of giant raging demon to stick on your amour; you actually get the item in 3D and decide the best place to put it on your amour for maximum defense and little penalties =D That is a game within a game really =/ in 10 years time it shall be so ! >

03-20-2007, 11:19 AM	#41 (permalink)
gr4vity Subscriber Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Cyprus Class: Cleric Race: Asmodians	I have played so many MMORPGs, I think Lineage II crafting methods and item gathering from mobs is the most solid from all. PS. Mining/skining/etc/etc are useless and not fun. (imo)

03-20-2007, 11:53 AM	#43 (permalink)
Myz College Drunkard Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: North Carolina Race: Elyos	I certainly -- CERTAINLY -- hope that, given Aion's ability of flight, that the location of mines, as well as the materials / minerals that can be mined / harvested, will be EXTREMELY different, and perhaps even challenging to collect. __________________ http://www.chriscohrs.com What is forgotten is forever immortal

03-20-2007, 12:05 PM	#44 (permalink)
skimike Daeva Join Date: Nov 2006 Race: Undecided	I hated all crafting until EQ2. While I didn't care for the gathering of resources and the interdependencies of different crafting classes on each other (it was a big problem when the game first launched but I am told it was changed for the better sometime after I stopped playing), I enjoyed the 'combat' mechanics involved. I'll always remember the day a forge 'defeated' a guy who was crafting next to me. It exploded and he died. The forge was fine but he wasn't so lucky, as witnessed by his corpse laying on the ground next to me. 1. Make crafting something people want to do for fun, not something they have to do to progress. 2. Open crafting up completely; if you and your buddies slay the Evil Dragongod Vista and he drops the Guantlets of Ubar Sparklies, some crafter, somewhere, once upon a time, managed to craft them. Players should be able to discover the formula and, if of appropriate skill level, should be able to have a reasonable chance to craft them as well. 3. Crafters should be able to create items with a reasonable chance of success. Nothing's more frustrating than being maximum level in crafting and having a 1% chance of success, failing, and having all the items used be destoyed in the process. 4. Don't destroy items if they cannot be combined to create something useful and a player attempts to combine them - tell the player he's an idiot and that he can't mix Mithril and Spinach to make the Sword of Popeye. 5. Player-crafted items should be on par with dropped loot through the end-game with equivalent difficulty to obtain the components necessary to craft said equivalent item. 6. Drops are more fun than begging from crafters. It's not nearly as much fun to kill a bunch of mobs and get components for an item as it is to kill a bunch of mobs and get the item. We're living in the age of instant gratification. Just go with it. Make components that are drops secondary in nature; the 'good' loot should always come first. I don't know why this makes me think of Nagafen raids before there were any original EQ expansions but it does. Red dragon scale? Hmm. Gathered components could be gathered over time and then crafted into the same legendary drops from the mobs. 7. If a player reaches some sort of legendary crafter status as in point #2 above, the player should be able to create his or her own formulas that can be unique and tagged with the player's name. It might take more space in a relational database to store unique items versus pre-canned ones but disk is cheap and, if the server design is good, unique items do not have to mean wasted memory (not so cheap). 8. If I'm making a Sword of Static Electricity and I happen to do it during a thunderstorm, maybe I get lucky and get a bonus applied to the sword. 9. I'm not sure how you make mining fun but I can say FFXI did not do it well, with bots just running from spot to spot, mining all the points like mad. Once you start making boring elements like mining, people start making tedium reducers like bots. If you have mining, that probably means that it'll take hours of repetition to mine needed components. In my own personal case, as a person who works a full-time job with oncalls and has a family, that's time I would have to spend not adventuring. As my time is precious, I can tell you I'm not going to waste it running from spot to spot with a pickaxe for 4 hours a night while my friends are out slaying Big Bad Nasty #10. Crafting I can at least see as a viable part of the game but mining resources just sucks. I don't want to come home from a day at the office, take care of whatever chores need to be accomplished, play with the kids for a couple hours, put them to bed, and then log on to experience the...mindnumbing boredom of chopping down 3,276 trees necessary to build a small wooden box.

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