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

[Leo]

The crafting system is a vital feature in today's most popular MMORPGs. Players are able to create unique and special items such as armour, jewellery and potions, which in turn can help them play the game more effectively.

To craft successfully, it is essential to mine or harvest materials which can then be combined to create useful items. The possibilities of utilising such complex skills are endless. For example, you could mine minerals from the Earth, smelt them down into metals and use them to forge a powerful suit of armour. The player could then work on mastering these skills.

The crafting system should be flexible enough to fulfil the needs of every type of player. Some may wish to create a sacred weapon from holy water, others may prefer to create accessories with which to decorate their character.

What kind of crafting system do you think Aion needs? Perhaps you have some totally new ideas about crafting & mining that have never been seen before. We want to hear what you think.

[Saito]

I've seen a number of crafting systems including mining but personally I think mining is one of the most boring things EVER. I do like the way this is done in lineage 2 where a class has the ability to get more/different items from a monster.

You will also have to make a good balance between those who get those resources and those who make items from them. For example if one can excel in both finding/mining items and making them you basically have a walking gold mine.

Of course finding a good balance between getting materials and the amount needed is hard... You can make things easier for players that solo a lot but that would mean a good clan can create items extremely fast but if you try to make it hard for the clans to push out high quality equipment at a decent rate you will make things very hard for people that solo.

What might be a good idea is add items/parts/materials that only drop from mobs that are supposed to be hunted by people that solo so those people will be able to get different looking equipment with different bonuses then those that party a lot.

Personally I prefer a hard crafting system, something you really have to put some effort in making things. But of course that comes with a problem the harder to craft anything the more lucrative ebay'ing will be so maybe a way to personalize items but not making it so bad you can't get ever sell them.

[Ipmia]

crafting craftin crafting..

I like to be able to craft pretty much evyrthing at a certain lvl.. like some major crafting school that would need other crafting scchool to progress.. that would make you specialised in one scholl ( able to craft to the max possible) with all the other schools that couldnt go higher than a certain lvl but would allow to craft some minor stuffs still.

i also would like that anything crafted might be usefull.. if not to use then for some savage system that would give some other items used to crafted higher stuffs ^^

with all those main lines it would be nice not to have any fixed recipe.. i mean by that let say a armor/jewel/weapon would have a main line to be crafted but with a special effect on every materials ( that could be colors change, stats, small boosts etc) ofc this would be an unknow alchimy that player would discover by trying to assemble with different stuffs.

any crafter should be also able to "copyright" its creations ( like name or a little msg on the item the must would be to be able to write something)

ofc i d like to be able to craft useless stuff like hats, robes, pants stuff just to showoff and extend the visual experience of the game ^^

that the few ideas that come to my mind, i ll edit if i come with something else ^^

[Gaspard]

In some games, crafting armour becomes useless at high levels because it's just nowhere near as good as the armour that drops from bosses. Also, crafting skills usually consist of a list of recipes which all make the exact same item, so there really isn't much difference between crafting the armour and picking up some unique boss-drop. So to fix the worthless armour, you could have some really epic recipes that require components from some really tricky spots (an instanced dungeon, perhaps, so that people aren't all fighting over it).

And I was thinking of customisation too: for instance, when crafting the armour, you'd choose between, say, some different precious gems that can either boost defence, magic resistance, &c. But then you might feel obliged to have several sets of armour, and switch between them as the situation demands, which isn't something I'd feel terribly enthusiastic about.

Personally, I never much liked Diablo-style potion binge-drinking.
Jewellery and other ornaments (gilt armour? gold-leaf on your helmet?) would be really really nice.

[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.

[Ipmia]

that s not very constructive Mark ^^ some people have fun crafting and eventhough its not my cup of tea either i like the idea of being able to crft a custom item that wont be necerly droped by a mob ^^.

Now yea would be nice to not have to sit hours to lvlup your crafting skills ^^
or turning it more fun to lvlup.

[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

[Anseku]

Well... Ok. Lineage crasf system is good. But...
1) We need more stuff. Much more stuff. Not only set items.
2) ITo craft them all we do not need equal number of receipts. We get for example 5 levels of receipt quality, for example. And we have level of item this receipt can make. When we use 1 level receipt we get armour\etc with basic stats in some random period, for example:
Rec. Heavy armour lvl 1.
pdef: 300-350
ingredients:...
We get random stats.
For level 2 we get some bonus:
Rec. Heavy armour lvl 2.
pdef: 310-360
ingredients:...
For level 3 more some other bonus:
Rec. Heavy armour lvl 3.
pdef: 310-360
hp +50 or mp +50 or something else. This thing shoud also be random.
ingredients:...
And so on.
So for lvl 5 we get rly cool equip
Of course to get lvl 5 rec is rly hard.
What do you think of this?

P.S. sry for my bad english T_T

[Saito]

mmm saw a friend of mine play second life and it basically has a entire design tool build where you can really make anything you want as far as your skill goes with such tools.



which would result in very unique items.

[Yakuzan]

Originally Posted by Leo

you could mine minerals from the Earth, smelt them down into metals and use them to forge a powerful suit of armour.

Althought it's the main way of crafting things(like blacksmithing) it's not very original most games use that system. It's hard to come up something new that hasn't been done yet and I wouldn't be able to think of anything in a couple minutes.

One things for sure, I want to see variety lots of professions so any player can actually get one that idetify's with there class ect.

@ Saito: I have never played second life but this system doesn't sound user-friendly, I might be wrong thought.

[Ipmia]

why not jsut use prooved system and improve it ?

i loved DAOC crafting system, it was friendly to use but still quite complex.. for people that dont know how it worked i ll sum the mainlines.

basicly you picked up a main crafting branch ( taylor, blacksmith etc).. and lvl ed it up, to do so you had to also lvl up the others crafting branch.. the difference beeing that you couldnt lvl them past a certain lvl. once the main crafting branch mastered you still could try to "overcraft" meanning you could try to craft a itme with more slots for boosts than a "normal" ( read that not mastered) crafter. the last few points to get to master were a ***** to obtein but hey .. the benefits were not to negligate^^. also each craft rbanch could salvage anything that was under they capabilities ( liek a blacksmith could salavage any weapon/heavy armor) and use the obteined item to craft something else

imo this is a pretty good system that also has a lot of twinking possibilities to turn it even better.. would be great to not have only "write in stone" items.. something that would be quite to the player to find out.

like lets say you get a pruple flower.. obviously you gona be able to taint your armors with it if you are taylor.. but might be it can also be used to make a poison ? see what i mean ? something were it would be up ot everyone to find out what XXX item can do ^^

would be nice to be able to modifie any looted item to a certaine xtend too.

[Fleiva]

What about if we could get basic weapons in shops, advanced weapons in raids, and thanks to some quests or some grind, we get items that would upgrade our weapons differently and in a stackable, limited way, changing the image of the weapon aswell for uniqueness. Same with armors

Those upgrades would be special abilities, skill addons, stat boosters, etc.

For example.

I buy a Polearm in shop, after that, i do a quest for a HP booster addon, then, i add some lethal hits booster, and after i add a skill that stuns my enemies. The weapon image would change in the proccess.

That's my idea, in L2, everyone knows for sure what's the special ability they should add cause they have 3 options per weapon, but with combinations, it would be way harder to find out what's the perfect weapon. That would do a great replacement for traditional crafting imo.

[Kinspawn]

i think having the classic crafting classes i.e mining, cooking etc. but maybe specialise them to Aion. Say maybe instead of "mine" materials, you can magically extract different elemental 'Ore' or 'Gems' from anywhere, say you want Aqua Ore, you have to magically extract near the ocean/lakes.
This also ties in nicely with the elemental stats when near water etc.
probably be best to have each character choose two skill tree's to level up, one is a "gathering" skill (so getting more item drops from mobs, mining more items) the other is a "crafting" skill (cooking, blacksmithing, jeweler), this way characters can specialise how they get materials and what they use them for.

I like the upgading system in RF Online too, so maybe say Aqua Ore can be processed and you get water gems and other items with water element that you can fuse into an item/armor to have different abilities (say fire resistance).

Higher level areas should provide players with higher level materials, so your crafting level can rise relatively equally to your level.

Potions should be craftable to anyone, as generally there isnt that big a variety of potions in an MMO so potion making gets shafted really.

[Saito]

Originally Posted by Yakuzan

@ Saito: I have never played second life but this system doesn't sound user-friendly, I might be wrong thought.

I was more thinking adding in addition of the normal crafting that way you can get some really special looking gear.

And yeah you're right there will probably only a handful of people that can really create something that looks really good but that just adds to the uniqueness.

Just think about having a insane looking (in a good way) sword and be the one and only on the server EVER to have it =) thats just nice.

[Koji]

I have to say that i enjoy crafting if it's worthwhile. WoW was just rediculous as it took no effort to make something...you just had to have the items.

Vanguard has the right idea i think. With a completely different level, armour and experience section dedicated to crafting. So if you want to concentrate on crafting you can and leave your adventuring level. Or visa versa. This gives the player options and options are key to MMO's i think.

The system of crafting is very interesting also. Having to work through the different components of crafting. for a woodworker this was like:

- Materials
- Clamping
- Cleaning
- Shaping
- Finishing

Each had different processes which gave different levels of progress and quality depending on timepoints used.

Quality of the item also improved it's attributes which encouraged people to work on making their items of a good quality.

It is more work than most MMO's but to the person that values crafting it was very rewarding. The only thing that annoys me about MMO crafting is that people only create things to sell in mass. I prefer crafted items to be worthwhile to a player other than to sell.