Crafting System 2.3.2

What kind of game are you making, and how important is crafting to the world? I think that would help put it into context.

Crafting is very important to the game. It consists of about 30% of starting gameplay. NPC sold items will not be as high quality as crafted items. The game is a ORPG set in typical fantasy world.
and technically, I'm not making a game right now. Just working the brain muscles and writing a GDD, see what new things I can come up with.

So, with the system that you're proposing, a person would need to be a great builder AT EVERYTHING in order to be a GREAT builder, right?

If that's the case, I would think that it would dis encourage people from becoming masters at anything.

As for the item decaying over time, would the items be able to be recreated or repaired? If they wouldn't be, that would suck and I think it would be frustrating to people.

(Keep in mind I'm not really into the whole build your own armor type of thing. I prefer my armor to just be given to me.)

To elaborate on the above poster's point, decay works in some games but you need to plan for it.

Mastery should decay slowly and be easier to get back then the first time. If you played soccer as a kid and picked it up as an adult, it would be a lot easier to re-learn.

Non-perishable items should never decay for no reason. Weapons should decay when used and the same with armor. Maybe you can repair it a few times but that's it. Maybe you have the chance of getting your weapon stolen when you die or something as well.

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Original post by jrjellybean I prefer my armor to just be given to me.

You pay for them, right? Or you mean "I prefer my armour to just be given to me for free" :)

Back to the original post, I also fail to see the reason for item decay and skill decrease if not used, save making the game tedious. Or is there some part of the game which depends on these two features.

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Original post by jrjellybean So, with the system that you're proposing, a person would need to be a great builder AT EVERYTHING in order to be a GREAT builder, right? If that's the case, I would think that it would dis encourage people from becoming masters at anything. As for the item decaying over time, would the items be able to be recreated or repaired? If they wouldn't be, that would suck and I think it would be frustrating to people. (Keep in mind I'm not really into the whole build your own armor type of thing. I prefer my armor to just be given to me.)

You only need to be skilled in a few areas in order to be considered "great." With this system it is near impossible to become great at every single thing on their skill tree. This is to keep people from being able to commandeer a massive part of the market.

Items can be repaired, but only recreated by the crafter. If you don't want to create your own armor that's fine, you can always buy it off one whom enjoys crafting and never spend a day doing it yourself.

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Original post by Darklich528 To elaborate on the above poster's point, decay works in some games but you need to plan for it. Mastery should decay slowly and be easier to get back then the first time. If you played soccer as a kid and picked it up as an adult, it would be a lot easier to re-learn. Non-perishable items should never decay for no reason. Weapons should decay when used and the same with armor. Maybe you can repair it a few times but that's it. Maybe you have the chance of getting your weapon stolen when you die or something as well.

I agree with mastery being able to pick back up faster after decaying, thats an idea I'd not thought of before..
I suppose I forgot to add the cause of decay, which is use in battle(for armors and weapons) and for perishable items, they slowly lose potency over time to the point of being harmful to health.

and when I say over time, I mean a good long time.

EDIT: I should also add, mastery does not decrease just over time, but over the time during which you are crafting other things.

Hmm. I like crafting in general, but I'm not really seeing why this would be fun. The fact that you have to choose only two professions per character and only one type of mastery per profession is one of the worst parts of WoW's crafting system (among several bad parts).

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Original post by sunandshadow Hmm. I like crafting in general, but I'm not really seeing why this would be fun. The fact that you have to choose only two professions per character and only one type of mastery per profession is one of the worst parts of WoW's crafting system (among several bad parts).

Could you please tell me what would make this not fun for you? I'm not saying, you can't craft whatever you want, I'm just saying you can't craft everything in the world. Which is really only fair. Especially for newer players, they would have a better chance of finding a place in the market I would think.

Well, I prefer to craft for myself (build a house, build tools and appliances to expand my crafting capabilities, make all my own gear, breed pet monsters/mounts, make dyes to customize my clothes and hair, etc.) I am not really interested in crafting for the market unless it's an item in constant demand, like inventory bags or dyes or scrolls or mounts. I like the kind of crafting where gathering/farming/breeding resources plays like a sim or RTS game, although farming monsters for drops is okay IF you can actually get the drops solo and at a wide range of levels; a lot of games gimp drop rates to require group play or have a narrow window of level-appropriateness.

I do like crafting on commission, particularly I like a 2-person crafting interface where the client enters the ingredients and/or fee, the craftsman enters anything they are supplying, then the resultant craft goes directly into the client's inventory. One of the main keys to a good crafting system is a global marketplace with NO selling fees and plenty of selling slots (at least 20).

I haven't read all the replies, but I just wanted to say, I have planned to do exactly this.

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Original post by sitwind Quote: Original post by jrjellybean I prefer my armor to just be given to me. You pay for them, right? Or you mean "I prefer my armour to just be given to me for free" :) Back to the original post, I also fail to see the reason for item decay and skill decrease if not used, save making the game tedious. Or is there some part of the game which depends on these two features.

I'm guessing that the reason for item decay is to prevent the market from getting flooded, crafting tends to get meaningless if all players have the best possible gear allready, By keeping players replacing their gear (even with similar or worse quality equipment) there will always be a market for crafting.

For such a system to work its important to not allow gear to play too large a role though nor can you let gear become difficult or time consuming to obtain. (If some gear can be really hard or time consuming to obtain there has to be a reasonably easy way for the player to ensure that he never lose that gear) (You can still make such ways fairly expensive to keep players from using their high end gear for trivial tasks thus keeping a market for cheaper replacable items)

I like recipe-based systems with a lot of skill checks, which is what you seem to be describing here, but if you're going to make it that grind-intensive, you'll run into the ubiquitous snafu of grind-based crafting skill, where making a sword is a means to "level up", and the sword itself is a byproduct which is often worth less than the materials that went into it. If you bring a blacksmith an ingot of iron and he makes it into a dagger, you've done him a service, not the other way around.

The method by which crafting is achieved is important, and like I said, yours is a good model (particularly if you have people building the hammers, chisels and axes that are used by craftsmen), but in a persistent world you'll inevitably find the market saturated with "practice" goods, gleaming swords and enchanted wands that pile up in the corner of workshops as fast as ash builds up in a fireplace, because a smith goes into his smithy, does a hard day's work, and then takes the fruit of his labor (XP) away in his character sheet, leaving dozens of essentially valueless spears and helmets in the bin behind him.

How will your crafting system interact with the game at large? In order to make it worthwhile and attach value to both the goods and the skills, I recommend two key game elements that don't directly involve the crafting process: First, I suggest that you allow people to train their crafting skills without much hands-on grinding, and second, I think you should include a sophisticated business model for contracting the services of skilled craftsmen.

If it became possible to level up your crafting skills through a program of study and practice, you could learn about silversmithing or woodcarving without even having the tools or materials on hand. Let players build up "theoretical" skills by studying books or observing another craftsman at work, and either convert those activities directly into skill points or use them as modifiers when calculating the gain from practical exercises. If my level 0 alchemist attends a seminar on field preparation of salves and tinctures, then reads up on ingredients, and then gets a starter kit and tries a few preparations, he'll learn more from five attempts than he would if he skipped the classes and reading and just bought a barrel of herbs and mashed them together in his lab for three straight days.

With a robust market and bidding system in place, it would be possible for a player to put out a contract for ten healing potions, three poison antidotes and an elixir of resurrection. A chemist could accept the contract and agree on a price (possibly without ever having been active at the same time as the other player, using a bidding system) and then produce the goods and deliver them. Other players might take up pure trading, making bulk orders and then selling them at a moment's notice for a marked-up price.

A system like that would encourage two different crafting archtypes: There would be the jack-of-all-trades, who has perhaps 30% training across the board and can make you any ceramic item you could hope for, and there would be the specialist, who has dedicated his training to a narrow field and can provide, on demand, the advanced items that are too difficult and costly to stockpile.

This way, the crafting of the game is married to the commerce of the game, and becomes a component of the world rather than a mini-game. Of course, if you're after a minigame that every player can get into and enjoy, then you'll have to find another way to fabricate demand to match the supply. WoW uses the soulbinding mechanic, where an item cannot be traded away after it's been used, so everyone has to get their own even if hundreds of other people have perfectly good ones and have outgrown them. That keeps crafters in business.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage A system like that would encourage two different crafting archtypes: There would be the jack-of-all-trades, who has perhaps 30% training across the board and can make you any ceramic item you could hope for, and there would be the specialist, who has dedicated his training to a narrow field and can provide, on demand, the advanced items that are too difficult and costly to stockpile. This way, the crafting of the game is married to the commerce of the game, and becomes a component of the world rather than a mini-game. Of course, if you're after a minigame that every player can get into and enjoy, then you'll have to find another way to fabricate demand to match the supply. WoW uses the soulbinding mechanic, where an item cannot be traded away after it's been used, so everyone has to get their own even if hundreds of other people have perfectly good ones and have outgrown them. That keeps crafters in business.

You sir, are still awesome. I never thought how bad the grinding could get in a system like that. I will definitely think of some different ways to provide the ability to raise mastery levels without creating surplus items.

I've got a half-fleshed out system in place that will allow players to contract out or hire other mates for their immediate skills, but it still needs work.

This idea is nice, but it depends on what does item mastery effect.

1) non-battle stats e.g durability : ok, its not a crucial factor in battle, so even lower crafted items of same type will be sold, with slitter less price. It depends also on the gap, if the best mastery item has 100% more durability than the worst then consider it as a battle stat (you dont want your armor to break on a boss and get 1 shotted and wipe the entire raid).
Or make it so its cheaper for him to produce the item (requires less ingredients).

2) Battle stats : assuming there are 2 items, Flaming Sword of Alderan and Flaming Sword of Alderan + 1 (made by someone with higher mastery). Then the person that sold Flaming Sword of Alderan will get 0 money. Why ? because the first is worse. Players will always try to maximaze their stats and prefer to stay with no armor for some time until they gather the required money.

How will this affect the future ?

All players will try to craft only the final tier weapon. No lower tier will exist in the market (except in the start when the population starts to level up).
The market will flood with omega_sword_of_one_shoting+99. Its price will be 500 gold initially, but later will fall to 10 gold because the marker is flooded by them. Thus crafters will get money just to pay the ingredient costs.

At the end those that use the proffisions will have lost 100+ hour of gameplay in vain just to level up their proffision and will have less money than farmers.

3) You can add the effect of randomness.
a) it will affect the time required to craft an item e.g 1 sec vs 60 seconds crafting time.
b) it will affect the difficulty of crafting it, e.g when you play the minigame to successfully craft something, higher mastery players will be able to do it with their eyes closed, but low mastery players will have to sweat and it will take them longer for them.
c) Higher tier items will be more concentrated. E.g boots of strength will
give +10 strength.
Low tier items will be more chaotic. E.g boots of strength will give 8
strength and 2 vitality (but not less than 10 points of stats because it
will alter the overall value of the item, and none will buy it).

If your stats arent 100% balanced e.g if strength > vitality then this
will reduce the overall quality of the item and it will fall in the above
case.


One of the biggest challenges is the following :

if items get destroyed, then none will farm high level instances e.g naxx just to get a gear, since they know they will lose it, after some time. This will make you lose every player when they reach max level since they wont have anything to do (the only reason most people play wow is for power = gear).

if items dont get destroyed, then players will quit when they get best equipment (at least you made them, stay longer).

if you can constantly find better and better items e.g every day you allow higher level monsters and higher level items, so there is no best item or level cap, then high level players will play forever (just to get the ultimate power) however new players wont play your game.
Why should a player play a game when there is no chance to ever obtain the power of a person that started the game before. No matter how he tries he will always have worse equipment, and worse stats. This will mean no pvp since there will be huge power gaps.

You may try the following:
1) improve the rate new players increase their power (in order to reach the power of the others). However they will get used to leveling up after every kill and when they reach near the power of the other players, they will see that they have to kill 912312412 monsters to level up and thus quit because they arent used to grinding for hours just to get 1 level. Also higher level players will get angry about this (newbies reaching true power with less time consumed that they did) and thus quit.
Thus everyone will quit.

So the problem becames the following :

How much time should a new player consume to become max level, max equipment ? How to give the feeling of advancement to max level players in order to keep them playing ?
( i dont think just high scores will work, all they care is battle power !!!).
How to introduce new content to avoid the problem wow had :
e.g Best items before burning crusade were worse than green items of burning crusade. So why did high level players spend 123 days of their life farming the same dungeon, only to see later newbies getting everything free with less work.

I think its imposible to balance, and the only solution is to follow the wow's way. Expansions happening every 2 years. Level caps. Equipment caps. At least when a new expansion comes, everyone will go back to it, (to get the new epix). They will quit afterwords, but who cares when you take their money. Thus wow's business model is the only way for a mmorpg to stay alive.

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Original post by sunandshadow The fact that you have to choose only two professions per character and only one type of mastery per profession is one of the worst parts of WoW's crafting system (among several bad parts).

I think thats the smartest thing that wow did, because in this way, wow forces you to :
1) cooperate with others.
2) increase replayability by making you make many alts.
3) it allows more characters customisation, skinners get more critical, herbalists get a free heal.

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Original post by titanfantasy Quote: Original post by sunandshadow The fact that you have to choose only two professions per character and only one type of mastery per profession is one of the worst parts of WoW's crafting system (among several bad parts). I think thats the smartest thing that wow did, because in this way, wow forces you to : 1) cooperate with others.

DO NOT WANT. Forced cooperation is obnoxious.

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2) increase replayability by making you make many alts.

Breaks immersion/identification with your primary character, crafting level restrictions force the player to level all chars and once and have them all on the same server rather than maxing one and then starting another and getting to try out different servers. Worse than all that, though, is the fact that the game only has unique quests per race for the first 15 levels or so, then it merges into a single quest path per alignment, then a single quest path for everyone. There's still no replayability, and even more immersion breaking, if you're just doing the same quests over again.

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3) it allows more characters customisation, skinners get more critical, herbalists get a free heal.

That aspect would work just as well if you could have all professions on one character. And from the point of view of a player who doesn't like crafting but wants perfect stats for their build, it probably seems irritating.