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

[Dovie'andi]

I'm not going to suggest anything new or revolutionary, I just wanted to add my two cents. Mainly, what I'm worried about is the possibility of too much freedom and customization. Yes, too much. I'd hate to have just flown across a beautiful valley, watching a dramatic sunset, only to fly by some moron wearing neon pink glowing armor with the words 'i PWN n0bs' written on it in flowing golden script. Kills the sense of immersion. Yes, crafting definitely needs some customization, but I just want to warn against letting players make things that 'don't fit.'
First, naming is just too dangerous. How would you feel if you spent two days questing for the right ore to make the sword you've wanted since day 1, only to end up with the Sword of lolISuCK?
Second, I completely and totally support the ability to add dyes, glows, etc. but make sure the colors are reasonable. If it were possible, I would suggest to tailor color choices to the specific items, i.e. only ribbons and cute hats could be dyed pink, but your suit of chain mail couldn't. The Demon's Fang can't glow an angelic gold, but the Hammer of the Gods can. Some way to keep the customization reasonable with the items.
Thirdly, I also love the idea of swappable textures palettes. Odds are this would just go too far, but it really goes a long way towards making you feel like it's a real world. Maybe restrict it to item power/value/rarity. We don't need 10 different pairs of leather breeches that nobody's going to wear after level 1, but if the spiffy new Spiked Full Plate available at level 40 had a few variations, that makes everything all the sweeter.

Personally, immersion has to come before customization, and that goes both ways. Players shouldn't be allowed to make things that kill your immersion, and likewise every single lvl 37 Warrior shouldn't look identical. It all contributes to the overall experience.

[Bahamuth]

Originally Posted by 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.)

I totally agree with you. A really good looting, gathering and crafting system is hard to put together. In theory everyone loves to craft, loot and mine. But it's a lot harder to let everyone enjoy this system. I think this is one of the most important things of a MMORPG. Because mainly, the most you'll do in a MMORPG is:
1)Killing Mobs ==> Loot
2)Looting ==> Finding Materials or Gathering Resources on your own ==> Finding Materials
3)Finding Materials ==> Crafting

This is why a good looting, mining and crafting system is so important, because you do it all the time! Making this system boring, is making an important part of the game boring. That's my opinion.

(Pleasse dont let mobs drop their loot, it's really annoying to always click on the items that fall on the ground.)

[Beta4Life]

I like the idea that you have to have a profession to craft stuff. So a blacksmith can make stuff from metal but cannot work worth cloth. You only have 1/2 professions/sub professions that you can have at any time, and only certain races/classes can have certain professions.

for example:
Dwarves can become blacksmiths, and can specialize in weapon smithing or armor smithing. Then as a sub profession, can have the ability to mine, or some passive ability that allows them to loot minerals from special mobs (golems or some form of elemental mob)

Then Elves can choose from leatherworking, or tailoring, then can specialize these further into something like caster class leather/cloth etc. and have a similar sub profession or passive ability.

Humans (or other generic race) don't have the ability to craft, but gain 2 passive abilities as gatherers of both cloth and minerals, or advanced gatherers of minerals, gaining twice as much as a dwarf or elf would.

There could obviously be many more profession, and each class/race could be able to choose from them, but not all classes/races have the ability to get any of the professions, adding another element to choosing your race/class.

other professions:
potion maker
jeweler
~~~enchanter or arcanist(someone with the ability to make powerful enchants or scrolls that give certain abilities)
someone with the ability to make bombs/robots/mechanical items


Side note:

can always make this more interesting if you add in item binding. Craftables that cannot be traded/sold but are very rare and difficult to obtain.


Professions can be great fun, i know people that spent hours to grind the materials to be the first person on their server to craft a certain item or set. My brother was the first person to craft a full set of mandolorian armor on his SWG server, a huge accomplishment in that game at the time, but incredibly difficult to do, he probably spent 4-5 months grinding the items needed to craft this armor set.

[Kyouraku]

Errr sry wrong thread lol )

[Trevyc]

Was following Kyouraku.

[etherfreeze]

I think any crafting system would make me happy as long as it has a few interesting elemtents. You should be able to mine metals, maybe gems that have specific qualities, and find items from monsters.
Maybe you could follow an unconventional recipe system with two definites and one variable. For example, you need a certain metal, a certain monster drop, and then the option to use gems which could add unique qualities, or something that makes the armor a different color.
I think if you got to choose the armors color that would be cool (but if it was based on the type of the metal that would be ok)
---
I think another cool thing would be if there were a set of generic recipes that everyone knew, then a few rare ones that monsters drop, or you have to do a quest to do or something. These rare ones would be untradable, and a person could only make the item if they have the recipe in their possession.

[Trevyc]

So almost like the binding/crafting system in Diablo with the Cube..?

[etherfreeze]

um that was an OK system except the items (I guess you mean when using runewords) didn't change appearance. They should, and you should have to ascertain some recepies before being able to use them - not just take them off an internet site that lists all the combos.

[Drache]

I would like to see a crafting system that let you choose the apearance of what you make. Like the shape, color, and basic size of a piece of armor. Changing those few things around can make even similar item look entirely different. With everything looking slightly different people would be more original looking and not all the same which gets old after a while. Same reason i hate armor sets, everybody wears the same one cause its good so everyone looks the same.

[Anuxinamoon]

Has anyone played atiler iris 2: the Azoth of destany? It has a recipie system simmilar to what was mentioned above, with specific items you needed to have, but some items were replaceable, letting you swap them with other simmilar items of that group. So if you did decide to swap out an item for a stronger one, you could create a more powerful vesion or an entirely new item.

[Sovrath]

Originally Posted by Lytle

i probably like lineage 2's crafting system the best out of all the MMORPGs ive played. The items you craft are actually needed and you need a crafter to make you your armor and weapons

The "needed" thing is important but I hate L2 crafting.

Gathering thousands of mats and then gathering more of the same mats for sub recipes is ridiculous.

L2 crafting made me despise crafting. Until I started crafting a little on other games and realized it didn't have to be that way.

I always thought that being able to craft items where you had some say in the item's special abilities as well as the looks was what I wanted.

The looks: I had downloaded a mod in Neverwinter nights where you could tweak your character, add equipment and change how the equipment looked from several pauldron choices to fore arms to the gloves. Also colors. I would spend hours trying out different choices. Something like that would be interesting. Also color.

And then the special abilites... make it like the "picks" selections in Masters of Orion (when creating your own race). You could have up to 10 points. Choices have a certain amount of points and you could add what you wanted. However, certain choices had more points than others. Eventually you had to give the race some negatives in order to balance it out.

So truly crafting something that is unique would be of interest. Of course there are other issues with these items such as possible lag but you would most likely limit the choices a bit.

And again, no gathering thousands of little mats. Waste of time.

[Saito]

People usually complain about the Lineage 2 craft system but it's actually pretty good in my opinion. Yeah, sure you have to collect a ton of materials in order to make a item but that way clans become more important you'll really need a good, active clan in order to get the higher level gear.

With l2 crafting system you really have something to work for and show for when its done even though there may be 500 other people running around with the same armor but because of all the work you put in to getting your own it will always feel more special.

But I do notice most people like a system like that they usually don't mind hunting and leaving materials etc to the clan but people have a hard time hunting for certain items/materials/recipes we usually get replies like:

"but xp sucks there"
"i can level fast in ..."
"i make more money in ..."

things like that.. people just think the clan leader should somehow magically make recipes and materials appear. we currently have a nightmare robe, darkcrystal robe and a tallum heavy in clan storage but no one has earned it yet so the clan leader keeps them until someone does.

[Trevyc]

Keep in mind they need to please those that are not as active as the hardcore gamers. They need to give the ability to gain high level gear to those kind of people... otherwise a lot of people will be angered. While the looting to craft system is neat, ye can't over do it and leave behind the loners :P