Crafting adds repeatable content to MMOs
Having looked extensively at content in previous posts, and how we want it to be personal and persistent, there’s one area where content can be repeatable without players getting frustrated, but it isn’t being used to its full potential: crafting.
Crafting is an idea that is arguable the only original gameplay idea to have appeared in MMOs over single player RPGs (discuss!). You gather ingredients, learn skills and craft items. Then you repeat. In honesty, I suspect that the repeatable nature was the driving force behind the inclusion of the mechanic. It allows developers to give players something to do that isn’t eating up quest content, that we’re happy to repeat, and doesn’t require new areas to be created. It’s an ideal way of eating up game time.
However, most MMOs don’t do it justice. There’s an exception I know about from friends, which is EVE Online, and hopefully someone will leave a comment to explain how crafting works and why it’s important in EVE, as I’m not a player. Leaving EVE to one side though, World of Warcraft has crafting, but really it’s only food and water and potions that are that worth having. Lord of the Rings Online improved this slightly with a more sophisticated crafting system. You have three different professions, and you can progress through levels, and you have to rely on other gamers to get certain ingredients – it’s hard to be self sufficient as a crafter, unless you use the Auction House, so it adds to the social aspect.
Unfortunately, this improvement was somewhat ruined by the fact that 90% of the stuff you can craft is simply not worth having by the time you can craft it, and at higher levels even standard quest drops are better items than you can craft. Take tailoring – the only thing you can create that anyone might even consider buying is a cloak. All the rest, all the armour, is pointless.
The next-generation MMOs will realise that we want to actual have a purpose in the game, to serve a function to ourselves and others. In short, we want to be able to craft items that are as good as the best you can get from raiding. I’m not saying it should be made easy for you to create these high spec items, just possible. That opens up the gameplay massively – some may choose to go the raiding root, while others will toil away creating their own items. It’s a no brainer for developers surely, because it adds masses of game time in for players without any real new content work for the developers?
Aion claims that it will allow you to craft top end items
It’s possible that this is already happening. When I saw an alpha build of Aion: The Tower of Eternity at NCsoft last year even we talked about crafting (I’ve seen it more recently – check the preview in MMOZine, but didn’t look at crafting). They expressly said that you would be able to create items that were as good as, or better than, the drops. It was completely agreed that limiting the best items to raids was too frustrating for players who enjoyed the more sedate crafting element. It also allows you to become important to a guild just as a crafter, rather than your skills or use in combat. I’m hoping that this idea will be fully realised in Aion, and the inclusion of the Private Shop idea seems to indicate how much emphasis has been placed on crafting, and that other future MMOs will embrace it too.
So, am I alone in this? Is crafting pointless, or simply pointless in its current implementation?
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April 30, 2009 at 4:02 pm
I think you have a point on crafting, but maybe you’re not taking it far enough.
As a young boy, when Ultima Online had just hit the store shelves, I asked my dad if he’d let me play it. He decided it wouldn’t be a bad idea, and he bought it and we walked out of the Wal*Mart happily. I opened the box and began reading the instruction manual (as I often did), and in that heavy tome was a section on crafting. This being my first exposure to the genre, I thought when they said I could create my own weapons, that I could actually create something personally my own, completely custom! Of course, as I got older and wiser in the world of MMOs, I learned that was not the case.
I suppose my original notion goes hand-in-hand with the first part of this series, user-created content. But even so, if modern crafting systems even had something akin to Final Fantasy 7’s materia system (where pre-defined pieces could be inter-locked to create new effects), it would feel so much better to use. That opens up not only the possibility of repeatable content, but also that of discovering just what can work and what can’t!
I suppose I’ll end on one more story on why even a “materia-like” crafting system could be beneficial. I remember playing Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven a few years back. In the game was a sort of potion system, where you could mix two potions together to get some random effect — but if you mixed the wrong potions, they could explode and kill a party member! I’m not advocating such harsh punishments, but I remember going to GameFAQs to look up what potion combinations worked and which didn’t, and found a goldmine of social activity in the forums. There were notes being compared, effects being measured, and all sorts of other things. In an MMO, where the goal is to increase sociability between players, this can only be seen as a good thing, can’t it?
April 30, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I couldn’t agree more. Creating your own items is incredibly satisfying. When I created a mod for Neverwinter Nights, I spent days (and nights) creating the coolest new quest rewards, and even giving some items back stories. The problem for MMOs though is that it could allow you to create items that are far too powerful, or create a simple mod that just drops a brilliant weapon so you can then use it in the rest of the game and make even the developers’ own content too easy, but I guess that comes back to the moderation and QC/QA I suggested user-generated content would require.
May 6, 2009 at 11:45 am
Dude, if you thought that there were enough social interaction for crafting in such games, you should have checked Legend of Mana for PS1 in its golden days. The game has THE MOST complete and complex craft system that I have ever seen. Do find the game and check in out if you don’t believe me. People WISH any other game had a crafting system so unique and complete as that one.
May 1, 2009 at 5:08 pm
EVE Online. By the time you get into the Industry side of EVE you realize that “Crafting” just doesn’t do it justice. There’s a whole host of factors that contribute to this, but I’ll hit on the high ones.
1. All levels of industry have their place. Although you unlock more and bigger ships, smaller ships still have a place in combat due to their faster speeds. This is the equivalent of a level 1 potion still having a place in end game play.
2. Everything produced can be destroyed – either directly in combat or as cargo moving from one station to another. This creates a constant demand (think consumables in other games).
3. This is a Non-Consensual PvP game. Lots o stuff gets blown up regularly and has to be replaced.
4. The market is global. This prevents localized shortages from paralyzing the game. There is only one server. This has enormous impact on the resiliency of the market. Such is the power that prices tend to stabilize 2 weeks after a nerf/buff to the game. Only adding an entire new gaming subsystem takes more time (and in that case it’s the industry side that takes time to spool up, not the market).
5. There is a large spread in useful items by the end game. The spread of things you can build and the spread of things you can use just keeps growing since the older stuff keeps it’s usefulness even for end game players.
May 5, 2009 at 8:00 pm
[...] Part 3 – Crafting and economy 2.0 (see EVE Online’s industry) [...]
May 5, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I agree that Crafting hasn’t played a major role with me since I played EverQuest. I got better at crafting in LOTRO only because it qas required by my guild. Like you and others have said, there’s little to no point to craft items at high levels cause you can’t use them; the exception is potions to a degree.
I would like to know that I can get into crafting easily and produce articles of armor & weapons with friends by buying/trading items and combining items together.
May 6, 2009 at 1:34 am
SWG definitely had an amazing crafting system. Best items were crafted every crafted item had quality that reflected the crafters work. You could make a name and career out of being a weaponsmith or armorsmith or even cook.
The idea that as a crafter the time i take to get the best quality supplies and gear for crafting that creates an item that can be better than the competition is awsome. This ties directly to the i want to customize my toon.
Having the resource system added incentives to play every day, and a supply side to the manufacturing.
Eve has some of this as well ( i don’t play but friends do). Maybe it has it all i will have to talk to them.. SWG definitely deserves a mention on the crafting post tho
May 7, 2009 at 5:01 pm
I have to agree that SWG needs a mention, at least in its early form, as one of the big crafting pioneers of MMOs. I’d really like to see a closer marriage between the raid groups and the crafters to really bring that aspect of MMOs to a new level. SWG had something close to that but make it an even larger aspect such as the raid group goes and loots some great crafting enhancement or piece of a weapon type that needs a crafter to use it but makes a weapon that is stronger than one you could loot.
This is a little closer to user generated contented perhaps, but allowing great customization of the look of the weapon by the crafter. Two people might have the same weapon, but they both look different and have their own character. For an art style like WoW this might not work, but allow crafters to change the blades, handles, hand-guards, etc of weapons to give it a customization maybe not the same as character creation, but in similar spirit.
May 7, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Just for those scratching their heads, “SWG” is Star Wars Galaxies.
May 13, 2009 at 11:18 am
[...] content How to create the perfect MMO – Part 2 – Persistence and story telling How to create the perfect MMO – Part 3 – Crafting How to create the perfect MMO – Part 4 – Character customisation How [...]
May 17, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Why these companies haven’t managed to get this right is beyond me. It’s something that has a large following in these games,and yet the developers just don’t put the time/energy into fully realizing the potential. if a game has player housing of some kind (and every MMO should, because again there’s a large segment of the players that want it) then basically any item I see should be craftable, the lamp on npc X’s desk should be craftable. Not to mention any item of weapon/armor. The ides that something that drops can be reverse engineered makes sense, shouldn’t be easy, and the materials to reproduce it shouldn’t necessarily be easy to aquire, major skills may be needed, there may be good chance of failure, etc. I love the idea of being able to use crafting to upgrade/personalize/customize a drop or quest item. I also believe item wear should be a general mechanic in these games, it’s realistic and good for the in-game economy.