Do ANY games have worthwhile crafting?

[Trouble]

I've spent a lot of time looking around, trying to find anything that even remotely resembles an entertainin crafting system and I'm coming up dry. The only game that seems to have any decent kind of crafting is ATITD, which actually does seem to do a good job. I've played the game to death though, and all too often you end up in the rut of making stuff to make other stuff, instead of make stuff for other people to get good use out of it, which is more fulfilling.

The original SWG crafting system was...ok. What turned me off from it was the min/maxing there was with the gathering component, and it seemed more focus was placed on the gathering than on the crafting. It could have been good, I was very much looking forward to the game based on the info they released beforehand, but as we all know the game didn't deliver on promises and was released in an unfinished state. -deadhorse-

Eve also seems to have some sort of workable crafting system in place. It seems to be more about training skills than crafting itself. I played Eve for a month but I was quickly turned off by the time-based skill system and the game just never really grew on me.

Everquest 2, from what I've read, actually seemed to have the foundation for a compelling crafting system on release. The devs had some good ideas but I get the feeling that crafting was one of the first things canned when it came down to crunch time to release the game. Rather than continue developing and expanding the crafting system after launch it seems like they've castrated it and turned it more or less into a version of WoW's extremely shallow and unfulfilling system.

It's like a deep yearning in me...for this mythical deep crafting system where the crafting itself is not paper thin in depth, and where the results of my crafting are desired by people who use it for whatever nefarious tasks they are up to. I know I'm not alone in this. It just seems to me that there is this promise out there in the ether...hints of good ideas in dev blogs and in discussions and whatnot, but there's no practical application, no actual game that does it.

In summary, who do I have to blow around here for a decent crafting system?

[Simond]

EVE Online's tradeskilling is supposed to be fairly well done.

[Tale]

The original SWG crafting system was...ok. What turned me off from it was the min/maxing there was with the gathering component, and it seemed more focus was placed on the gathering than on the crafting.

I actually enjoyed the gathering component because my Master Doctor/near-Master Carbineer retained Novice Artisan and a fleet of high-end harvesters, so I was out in the remote parts of the relevant planet whenever a resource with better stats spawned, looking for a good spot. Same with scout-harvested resources - I would swap my 15 points from Novice Artisan into Novice Scout, and gather them myself.

I had a "crafting house" full of the best medical resources ever to spawn, and if a better one ever spawned I would upgrade to it, then go back to the crafting house and experiment with combinations. The range of possible resource stats and experimentation results meant everything old was new again when a better resource came along, altering the market and extending the life of the crafting game. That was pretty cool I thought - finding out what you could make from a 10-point better resource that goes into 30% of a component for a 5-component finished item, where you've had "amazing successes" on each part of each component, then making it a schematic and mass-producing a revolutionary new buff or med in your factory. Then taking it into PvP city wars and finding out your new 602-base cure is enough to one-shot the enemy's poisons (where it took two charges of the previous 590 packs).

What I didn't like was the need for loot that gave you extra experimentation points. That was horrible. It gave the super-rich a permanent advantage over the poor, even if the poor had the same resources.

I think your only hope, oddly enough, is Vanguard. Jeff Butler is a huge SWG fan and from what I've read, it sounds like they expanded on the SWG system. Here is a new write-up about it: http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=436 (beware the flashy Flash ads - maybe an idea to copy/paste the text into something more readable :) )

[Trouble]

I'm not gunna lie, if I could specialize in crafting in Vanguard and it was anyway decent, I could probably get a decent amount of enjoyable playtime out of it, rest of the game's crappiness aside.

[stray]

I'm not gunna lie, if I could specialize in crafting in Vanguard and it was anyway decent, I could probably get a decent amount of enjoyable playtime out of it, rest of the game's crappiness aside.

Any game centered on the idea of adventuring, especially a diku, isn't going to give you what you want. It's antithetical to that process.

[Tale]

Any game centered on the idea of adventuring, especially a diku, isn't going to give you what you want. It's antithetical to that process.

I think the official Vanguard answer to that is there are three equal spheres in the game, playable independently of each other: adventuring, crafting and diplomacy. If that turns out to be BS, you're looking at A Tale in the Desert (combatless crafting game).

[Trippy]

I'm not gunna lie, if I could specialize in crafting in Vanguard and it was anyway decent, I could probably get a decent amount of enjoyable playtime out of it, rest of the game's crappiness aside.

Any game centered on the idea of adventuring, especially a diku, isn't going to give you what you want. It's antithetical to that process.

It's not so much the adventuring part that's the problem, it's the dropped-loot-centered nature of many Dikus. In those types of games crafting will always be a second-class citizen even if the crafting system itself is well done.

[Venkman]

Exactly.

SWG had the best conceptual integration of the systems (as did its ancestor in pre-Trammel UO). Execution wise... well...

In diku-inspired games, it's generally the consumables that are relevant. Gear is always eventually outclassed by drops. They almost have to be, because the core element of such games is to dispense rewards at a programmed pace. It's just easier to do that through quests and boss mobs.

Also, in dikus, one crafter can easily handle the needs of hundreds. SWG was on the right track here, by having so many shades of quality in the equipment, and allow each to be customized further. But there's a lot of players who'd rather just know what they're going to get from a quest dialog box rather than having to hunt the galaxy for the best deal. The former is a reward for some fun. The latter is a reward that requires more work. It inspires larger groups working more cohesively, but that's not necessarily the natural inclination of folks in the genre.

"Relevant crafting" is uch more complex than just making a fun activity out of it with rewards people want. It's getting a lot more people than presently playing to like the more indirect path to advancement.

[Trouble]

I can think of...in theory...ideas to marry the two systems though. Like the system original described for EQ2 where important crafting components drop from epic encounters and they need to be crafted into the epic item. Even in WoW I could easily see integrating it with how tier 3 works. As it is, you get something like a "Desecrated Sandals" which needs to be turned in to a quest NPC for your respective classes armor piece. I could easily see changing that into some sort of player crafting process. Now WoW's crafting is extremely thin and just adding that into its current system wouldn't be anythnig special, but I'm just talking about marrying the two systems in theory. It could work but you need to intergrate crafting into the other systems.

[geldonyetich]

I might be able to better tell you if any games have worthwhile crafting if you could if you could define for me what "worthwhile crafting" is.

The way I see it, crafting is an "outside of the GUI-level" activity, meaning it focuses more on the big picture and less on what's right in front of you.  Star Wars Galaxies, A Tale In The Desert, they made crafting their focus and in doing so kinda forgot to add the game.

So, in my mind, if you're saying to me, "do ANY games have worthwhile crafting", you're speaking in oxymorons.  Crafting isn't a game.  Crafting is that thing people do as a sub-activity on the outside of the game, supporting the game, at best.

You'd have to explain to me why crafting is more exciting than counting the cracks in the ceiling before I'll be able to forward some suggestions as to what game, if any, features "worthwhile" crafting.

[Krakrok]

You could always try my 'Creative Crafting I' mini game. It rapidly devolves into whack-a-mole though.

I was thinking of experimenting with something like Creative Crafting I and mashing it togather with some kind of Spore like interface for creating truely unique items.

[Venkman]

Like the system original described for EQ2 where important crafting components drop from epic encounters and they need to be crafted into the epic item.

That's sorta how high end WoW Crafting works in some cases. Like, in order to smelt some type of Ore, you need to be in (I think) Blackrock Depths, a 56-60 zone). For Alchemy, the best combines are done in the Alchemy Lab of Scholomanc, another 55+ zone. I'm not sure how much this happens because I'm not sure how many care about what those efforts output.

In SWG there was the Mandalorian Armor crafting process that required a raid-size group hold against waves of enemies while crafters did the necessary combiness. That came later in the games life though.

Another problem is how the game world is designed. They're supposed to be dangerous, so everyone starts out as an adventure. If the worlds weren't dangerous, content would be trivial and people would get bored. So now everyone needs some skills to survive the wilds. So now everyone who's a crafter needs to be an adventurer too. Levels and gear. So they need gear. And where do THEY get gear: from drops and quests. Because that's the most fun way to do it.

Very few people want to be that dedicated crafter with zip for combat skills. They weren't even asked to be that in SWG, where most content WAS trivial for any form of crafting needed. And they only put up with it in UO because their other three character slots were 7xGM-whatever-was-needed-for-farming/PvP/treasurehunting.

[Reg]

EVE Online's tradeskilling is supposed to be fairly well done.

It's not that crafting in EVE is particularly fun (for me at least) it's just that it's actually important to the economy. And playing with the economy is where I get most of my fun out of EVE these days.

[hal]

One aspect of Eve crafting. If you are trying to make ISK (money) crafting you need tier 2 blueprints. Which are won at auction and your odds are small, indeed very small. So you can do all of the right things, make all the right decisions and never get anywhere. Or of course, you may hit the jackpot. It dose happen. But don't count on it as your odds are very small. Those blueprints are sold, but for large amounts of money and the market is sporadic.

[Merusk]

There's another reason crafting is always second-class in "Diku" type games. (The first being 'the game's about combat')   Crafters have shown they'll ALWAYS rape the combatants for cash when they're the economic centerpoint.   It happend in SWG, it happens with the T2 equip in Eve, it's happend in the few small MUDs I played that tried it as well.

When that happens, those of us more interested in combat find we're grinding for cash a hell of a lot more than we have to in traditional Games and wonder why we're bothering.   I know the ridiculous prices on Guns, armor, etc are why I stopped doing any kind of combat in SWG.  The amount of grinding required to gain the credits as a hybrid (not 100% combat) character for ANY weapon was insane when compared to your traditional 'catass' MMOs. 

[stray]

Gotta agree. The real griefers of SWG were the Weaponsmiths.

[Venkman]

If they were independent, yea. But the idea was that the guild/city/group would work together so that those IN that guild/city/group wouldn't get price-raped. That was for the suckers who flew into town to browse :)

Not saying that's how it happened for everyone. Just saying that was I think the theory.

[Nija]

If you want worthwhile crafting I can let you leech a few gigs of woodworking PDFs.

[Kitsune]

The crafting economy is fucked in games, primarily because the flow of resources is completely unnatural.  I mean, you wouldn't see somebody haul a ton of scrap metal into a garage, plop it down in front of a mechanic and say, 'Okay dude, I brought you the mats, so make me a car and I'll give you a couple buck tip.'  Having crafted items come from resources gathered in the game world immediately puts a weird spin on things as in many cases the ingredients are worth far more than the act of crafting them into a usable item.  And the people who gather those resources promptly price gouge the hell out of everyone for them, which puts the crafters in a bad spot.  If it takes you nine gold to get the materials to make a sword that's worth ten gold, why the hell would you want to take the time to get the skill to make the sword for one gold of profit when you could get the skill to get the materials and make nine gold?

[Trouble]

Having crafted items come from resources gathered in the game world immediately puts a weird spin on things as in many cases the ingredients are worth far more than the act of crafting them into a usable item.

That's a huge component right there. Many games make crafting into gathering plus pressing a button. A focus on gathering rare components is fine in its own right, but the crafting itself needs to have at least as much value as the gathering. For that to happen crafting requires complex interactions rather than tracking down the recipes and pressing a single button to make an item. ATITD far and away has gotten this part of it right. There's dozens of different "mini-games" required for each type of component. Some are very simple, practically the equivilent of pressing a single button. Some are complex tasks that only a few are able to master and produce good results from. Some anyone can do at a minimal level but require a lot of research, knowledge, and possibly skill to maximize the results from. All of them are unique and the combination of the whole crafting ecosystem is great. As I said the main part missing is the overarching purpose. I guess what I'm really saying is I'd like a crafting system like that married with an adventuring game/diku/something with killing.

[Venkman]

The bigger problem in my mind is how they feel they need to make crafting as "hard" as adventuring in the first place. Blizzard made crafting entirely about resource gathering. EQ2 tried to make it "fun", but all that Action/Reaction stuff really does is slow down the grind between the one or two times a day you use the buffs to try for a really excellent combine. SWG crafting was complex but not really hard per se. You needed the right materials and some good bit of luck, but once you had the right schematic and a good stockpile, factory city. What was hard was all on the commerce side.

Central to this issue is as I stated earlier: one crafter can equip an entire server of players. You don't NEED to make an enriching and deep crafting minigame because the output ratio is all whack. A real armor maker was not banging out clones of the same uber set at a rate of 20 a day. That stuff took time. Just finding the right armorsmith, and then enticing him to work with you, was tough enough. Then you waited.

The games that can get monopolized by a few price-fixing crafters are the ones that most emulate real economy. The rest just want to let people make stuff to fill in gaps between mob drops. So far, that's been perfectly fine. The vast majority of players are not interested in crafting because crafting means not adventuring. No matter how fun or engaging or relevant crafting is, no matter how much money could theoretically be made by it, no matter how easy it could ever be, most people will still be off questing and adventuring, either within that game world or a more popular game.

The density of crafters in SWG does not compare to just how many people didn't play that game because the only parts that worked really well for a long time was crafting.

[hal]

Wouldn't it be cool if it mimic ed real life more. I mean in a rising culture turning iron ore ( this is rust for all intents and purposeless) into swords is not a  trivial task. There are many steps and they all need skill and equipment. The opportunities to accomplish this would be few.and worth the journey as your sword would hold an edge much better, longer than the other guys bronze sword. Giving you a real advantage for your investment in getting it.

[geldonyetich]

Realism isn't exactly the formula to fun, however.  It's all very compelling to say that fabricating cars out of raw materials or producing a dozen suits of armor in a day is totally unrealistic, but would you want to play a game where it takes you months of real time to produce a full suit of plate armor?

While I just got done debunking trade skills as being a game, I do have a fairly good idea about how they can be used to support a game.  As a side activity, they can possess mini games of their own.  As a virtual economy contributor, they can provide a means for players to formulate a number of lesser items into a greater one, creating an additional scavenger hunt minigame.

As stands alone, however, crafting doesn't offer much.  Production without a demand.  A bunch of overindustrious natives sitting on an island filling it with wallets nobody uses.  What fun such an endeavor would offer would have to have something to do with producing wallets of extremely high craftsmanship and quality simply for the love of the art of wallet making.  In EvE, they light the wallets on fire and throw them at eachother to break the monotony.

[Venkman]

I mean in a rising culture turning iron ore ( this is rust for all intents and purposeless) into swords is not a  trivial task. There are many steps and they all need skill and equipment. The opportunities to accomplish this would be few.and worth the journey as your sword would hold an edge much better, longer than the other guys bronze sword. Giving you a real advantage for your investment in getting it.

The problem here is one of development investment. The more complex the system, the harder it may be to do something in game, the fewer who will do it. ATITD vs WoW (for comparisons of complexity and popularity).

How many sword makers were often called upon to actually use the skills of wielding one? This is the dichotomy in my mind. People don't come by the millions to sharpen blades. They come to stab things with them.

While I just got done debunking trade skills as being a game, I do have a fairly good idea about how they can be used to support a game.  As a side activity, they can possess mini games of their own.  As a virtual economy contributor, they can provide a means for players to formulate a number of lesser items into a greater one, creating an additional scavenger hunt minigame.

They do this already.

[Cheddar]

I loved Asherons Call 2's method of crafting.  Primary issue was with gathering materials.  DIKU + Foreign game mechanic = too much cost.

[Viin]

I always thought it'd be fun to turn crafting into more of a resource management game than 'collect x, collect y, press button, presto you have a sword'.

My take on it:

Instead of managing the resources and the building of items yourself, it's delegated to servants, slaves, and skilled employees.

Ie: Instead of mining out that ore vein you just found, you let your foreman know it's location and he'll go down there with a couple of guys and start mining away. They'd transport the ore back to your villa/estate, and stockpile it. Once you have enough, you hire a skilled smelter to smelt all your stuff down and pass it off to your weaponsmith. He then takes the raw iron and creates whatever type of weapon you have queued up for him.

Your workers skill up as they work, so eventually they will be able to make better items faster - but maybe it still takes a week to make a sword.. but that's ok, you aren't doing the work yourself.

This would also open up the trade and selling of skilled craftsmen. Maybe for a quest you are given a slave who's very skilled in certain tailoring disciplines but you aren't doing that kind of work (and keeping him increases your estates daily food intake = maintenance $$) so you sell him. Yes yes, that's not PC but I'm sure it could be made more PC by having contracts with workers and selling the contract or some such.

.. anyways, babble babble babble ..

[geldonyetich]

They do this already.

Yeah, I was just citing a few examples of where I found crafting actually contributing to a game, not uber new uses for trade skills.

If I were to try to innovate, I would probably look into adding depth.  Various ways skilled craftsmen can figure out how to improve crafted items, continually creating better and better versions.  Crafting would become a sort of invention system, with levels of technology improving through minor innovations and breakthroughs.  Put some fun on the GUI level so the players enjoy the innovation process.  The game developers would, of course, be constantly at work on additional content for crafters to discover.

Then, in order to balance the game in which these crafted tools are intended to support, you have the craftsmen sell the items to both players and their opposition.  If players don't want to fall behind the curve, they need to keep buying your goods.  Just like real arms dealers.

Of course, the distribution is another side game entirely.  I haven't seen very good smuggling mechanics yet.

Instead of managing the resources and the building of items yourself, it's delegated to servants, slaves, and skilled employees.

I agree.  Tedious busywork is best delegated to machines/NPCs.  (Yes, DQ, I'm aware there are games that have done this.)

[Falconeer]

On the Good Crafting vs. Diku model topic, I want to point out that in EQ2 there's a very good balance between the loot and the crafted stuff.
Basically the Mastercrafted items in EQ2 are the BEST equipment you can get save the Legendary/Fabled stuff.

Meaning that of course you will keep on looking for the best loot, but until you can get those you will definitely want to buy Mastercrafted Weapons, Armours and Jewellery.

The idea was, tiering the equipment:

- Common stuff (crap)
- Uncommon Stuff (crap/useful)
- Crafted Stuff, common materials (useful/useful)
- Mastercrafted Stuff, rare materials (Good)
- Legendary [Rare Loot] stuff (Good)
- Mastercrafted Stuff Imbued, rare materials + rare materials (Very Good)
- Legendary with Proc [Rare Loot] (Very Good)
- Fabled Stuff [Very Rare Loot] (Uber)

As you can see crafters provide the best equipment all around between up to the point where you are in a uberraid guild.
Crafted stuff is supposed to cover the holes you can't still cover with fabled/Legendary and it serves the purpose very well.
Plus, EQ2 has 14 equippable slot on characters, meaning there's a lot to equip and lots to be crafted (and sold).
No need to say, almost every player in the game had at a certain point of his/her char's life a full set of rare-crafted armour and weapon.

I dare to say that EQ2 is one of the diku with the best balance between loot and crafted items. Sure they revamped the system (and the loot) a couple of times and basically botched some improvements (and improved some botches) in its 2 year life, but after all is one of the best implemented diku-crafting. The system works despite the loot focus of the game and I hope Vanguard can follow such a scheme and of course perfection it.

[Sky]

http://www.homedepot.com

[Dren]

I also support the idea that Viin brought up.  I'd much rather do the macromanagement of crafting than the mundane collection and crafting myself.  (Don't make it random like the original SB though.)

I also support combining this activity in with the rest of the game whether it be PvE or PvP or both.  While your team mines, harvests, etc., a team can be created to protect them from either NPC's or PC's depending on your type of game.  The more valuable the mining/harvesting area, the more dangrous it is and requires more firepower to protect.

The crafting can be done by actively recruited the best talent and keeping it the best talent though training and use.  Again, inventories and shops would have to be protected against theft.

All the other ways I've seen reduces the activity to sitting next to a pile of resources clicking the same 3-5 buttons over and over again.  Usually this also degrades down to using macros or in some cases providing macros in the actual game! (SWG)

[Akkori]

SWG's crafting problems could have been reduced through 3 simple and easy to implement changes and 1 put-it-back-the-way-it-was ways.
1) Require harvester certs, so that novices can only use small harvs, and masters can use Heavy Harvs
2) Largers harv do NOT bring in *more* resources, only slightly better quality
3) Factories must DIE! Which means the need for identical components goes away too.
4) Decay, as much as fighters don't like it, is *required*

[Akkori]

The SWG system could have mimic'd this system. It was set up for it, at least. In the beginning, you needed Apprentice points to become a Master, and you got them by teaching people skill's you already knew (instead of them buying them from a trainer). This made it possible for you to have a couple players lower in skill than you woking with you, helping you make lower quality stuff for you, like components and gear, while you made high quality stuff. THey benefitted from your skill's and advice, and you got Apprentice points.

This could have evolved into a system where one Master would have a crew of learning players working as a team. The problem was that the $$ flow became pretty ridiculous really quickly, not to mention farmers, and it became too much of a "hassle" to learn from others, so people just bought all their skills. Skill's were super cheap to buy. And factories made it really easy to knock out a hundreds of super premium goods all by yourself.

So sad.

I always thought it'd be fun to turn crafting into more of a resource management game than 'collect x, collect y, press button, presto you have a sword'.

My take on it:

Instead of managing the resources and the building of items yourself, it's delegated to servants, slaves, and skilled employees.

Ie: Instead of mining out that ore vein you just found, you let your foreman know it's location and he'll go down there with a couple of guys and start mining away. They'd transport the ore back to your villa/estate, and stockpile it. Once you have enough, you hire a skilled smelter to smelt all your stuff down and pass it off to your weaponsmith. He then takes the raw iron and creates whatever type of weapon you have queued up for him.

Your workers skill up as they work, so eventually they will be able to make better items faster - but maybe it still takes a week to make a sword.. but that's ok, you aren't doing the work yourself.

This would also open up the trade and selling of skilled craftsmen. Maybe for a quest you are given a slave who's very skilled in certain tailoring disciplines but you aren't doing that kind of work (and keeping him increases your estates daily food intake = maintenance $$) so you sell him. Yes yes, that's not PC but I'm sure it could be made more PC by having contracts with workers and selling the contract or some such.

.. anyways, babble babble babble ..

[Morat20]

There's another reason crafting is always second-class in "Diku" type games. (The first being 'the game's about combat')   Crafters have shown they'll ALWAYS rape the combatants for cash when they're the economic centerpoint.   It happend in SWG, it happens with the T2 equip in Eve, it's happend in the few small MUDs I played that tried it as well.

When that happens, those of us more interested in combat find we're grinding for cash a hell of a lot more than we have to in traditional Games and wonder why we're bothering.   I know the ridiculous prices on Guns, armor, etc are why I stopped doing any kind of combat in SWG.  The amount of grinding required to gain the credits as a hybrid (not 100% combat) character for ANY weapon was insane when compared to your traditional 'catass' MMOs. 

Well, see, the way I figure it is like this:

If crafting uber-gun requires 100k of high-end resources + looted components that cost 500k a piece, then charging you 700k for a gun that cost me 600k isn't ripping you off. Especially if the guy buying the gun is going to go out and kill crap that drops the 500k components.

Every game that makes crafting useful -- rather than marginal -- ends up with combat folks who think they should be able to charge 5 million for a critical component, then turn around and buy the gun made with that component for a fraction of the price. It was a rare pure-combat toon who actually saw the costs that went into, say, a suit of armor. As a scout, I sold high-quality spawns or hide, bone, and meat to armorsmiths and doctors -- they had to buy massive quanities of a named spawn in order to continue producing high-quality goods when the spawn was inferior. I had a hard time bitching about armor costs when I could make millions of credits in a few hours whenever a good spawn was in place.

[Sky]

Ok. So I'm pretty much now officially against games with craftarding. Isn't a game supposed to be fun? I guess I'm also against Virtual Worlds and see more than ever the need to differentiate them right up front. I wasn't kidding with my link. If you're going to be more concerned about making stuff and profit margins, why not, you know, actually make stuff and make money? I just don't get it, I guess.

[Viin]

Some people enjoying creating and participating in economies not normally available. When will you get the chance to run a multibillion dollar corp that manufactures starships?