Ah crafting. Such has been an on going debate on my and many of my constituents’ blogs. I guess it’s not really so much a debate as a cry for something better, something innovative, something new.
As you well know, crafting is something I’m deeply interested in because I LOVE to create. I love the feeling of producing something with a tangible output that I can place somewhere and see it. I adored Everquest 2’s crafting system as it allowed you to make your own furniture and put it in your house (even though you couldn’t SIT ON IT) and Vanguard’s home / ship building intrigued me even though I never made it very far in the game (crafting wise).
But even after all these games and the various attempts to make crafting fun and rewarding, there really isn’t anything out there that addresses a few key things that Ysharros has hit on in her recent (french titled) post about crafting.
Every system is tiered so you use copper, or elm or sandstone or whatever first, then move up to the more precious metals / ore / stones as you progress. All of them have recipes you must either find through combat or obtain via leveling and training. There have been a few diamonds in the rough, including SW:G which basically made crafting a career choice (and damn fun it was), but to be honest I don’t remember exactly how it worked. I always had my vendors I went to for certain things and I don’t recall crafting in that game myself since I was a bounty hunter and crafting doesn’t really scream “I’m a mighty bounty hunter!”
Anywho, as I said I’ve had my own designs on crafting systems (as you may have read in my Harvest Moon: Online posts), but those were mostly just for that design style. I try to separate my ideas based on the style of game so I don’t end up giving the same system to multiple games as each deserves its own. To that end, I wish to relay to you some points on the crafting system design I have for the game I’m (slowly) working on in secret! Eh, not so much a secret, but whatever 
First off, we should examine what we want from a crafting system. Do we want it to feed adventurers or complement them, or both? Some people feel it’s more appropriate to split the 2 systems up so one doesn’t feel reliant on the other, but I’m of another belief. I think that each should be able to stand on their own, while reinforcing the other. I know, I know … I’m a radicalist.
With that in mind, we’ll approach this system with the idea that we want adventurers to be able to adventure without the help of crafters, should they choose to do so, but to be able to use the products crafters output should they choose to do so. The same also applies for the reverse.
Now what should be craftable? My vote goes to “damn near everything.” If I want to make a wall, I should be able to make a wall. If I want to make a wagonwheel, I should be able to make a wagonwheel. If I want to make a wagon to put that wagonwheel on, I should be able to do that as well. The catch? If I want to be able to make a wagon that scales the wall I made, I should be able to do that as well. What?
It’s called learning through experimentation and innovation. Too many systems rely on the fact that you have to go buy or receive by some other means, a recipe that tells you how to make what you’re making. Nowhere does a system allow you to experiment and add on to your recipe or even progress through experimentation. There are systems that have “experimentation” as a skill and this may change your output for better or worse, but nothing like I’m pitching here (that I know of. Correct me if I’m wrong).
Here’s how it works: I wish to make a sword. I’ll start out with a short sword because it’s very basic and my character doesn’t really have a good grasp on smithing yet. *I should note before we fully start this that I’m going off a skill based system, not an experience / level based system here.* In order to understand and appreciate the art of smithing (and so I don’t kill myself via some violent explosion or forge mishap) I will begin “small.” I gather my training documents received from the master smith in town, buy my tools, heat my forge and get everything ready. Yes I prefer this all be done in the game as crafting, to me, is like one big mini game 
Getting everything prepared and prepared correctly is part of the fun.
Once everything is ready, I take the ore and melt it down, pouring it into the mold and forming a crude blade. I then work the blade until it is shaped, fold it as many times as is written by the master as best I can, the finish it up with cooling, sharpening and polishing. Yay! I have a short sword. I may practice a few times to see if I can improve the speed at which I do so, but after a time I’m sure I’ll begin to grow curious as to what else I can make. Well, how about a long sword?
In most games I would have to return to the master and say “teach me how to make a longsword!” Thusly the trainer will give me a recipe which I add to my repertoire and I now know how to make one. Boring eh? So let’s make it a bit more fun and introduce our aforementioned idea of experimentation and innovation. A long sword, for the most part, is a short sword with a longer blade and possibly a slightly longer handle to balance it out. We’re not entirely sure, but that’s the beautiful point. So we find something to make a mold for a longer blade and pour a bit more molten ore in it, creating the blade the same way we did the first time. The end product is a longer blade that we can put a handle on and show to the master.
At this point, the master will inspect the components, check the balance, perhaps the width of the tang and evaluate how you’ve done. If successful you’ve just made a longsword on your own! Congratulations!
That’s just an elementary example, but the same ideas can be used to introduce forging magical weapons, coating weapons with other ore types, all kinds of things. Of course it’s not just reserved for smithing as any crafting career can do this.
As a woodworker, it doesn’t take much thought to look at a bed and say “well, that bed is made out of 4 posts and some supporting beams. I can do that!” You may not be able to do it flawlessly, but that’s where skill progression comes in 
As you get better you can adorn your products with flair and learn how to work the more precious resources so you don’t screw it up. Don’t get me wrong … if you find gold or platinum or adamantium you can play with it, but chances are you will have NO idea how to work it and will end up being able to do very little with it aside from chipping pieces off or completely ruining it because your preparation methods aren’t right. That’s the way it should be though, imo.
Now that we’ve started this whole endeavor, we need to find people who will buy our stuffs! Yeah! But wait … who’s going to buy copper short sword and rotted wooden beds? OK maybe not rotted, you ARE a business-person now, but you get the idea. This is a huge issue in games with crafting because eventually the lower tier crafted items have no use. As your player base starts wearing the All Mighty DragonScale Adorned Armor Set of the Gods, they have no use for a +1 copper shortsword. That’s fine though, because A: we’re skill based, not level based and B: We have a backup plan! Three letters: N, P, C.
Egads! How do NPCs take my stuff? “You mean … selling to a vendor for cash, right?” Nah … that’s not what I mean. I mean the fortress that protects your little town has NPC soldiers in it and since it’s a borderlands fortress, it’s the destination for many of the fresh, new recruits sent from the castle in your province. New recruits require new weapons, new equipment like beds or cots, new armor to wear, not to mention the fortress itself needing weapons and armor for training dummies and the like. Now you have 1 possible output for your wares. You can sell them to the local regent or simply provide them to the fortress in exchange for something they can give (aside from protection).
This can be accomplished via work orders, quests or just dropping off your weapons to an NPC market dealer who will “sell” the weapons over time as they are needed to the fortress. Better not put all your eggs in one basket though. Just a little piece of advice.
Yes, it’s tough starting off as an apprentice in whatever craft you’re doing. It’s competition based in many aspects with established people, but eventually they move on to bigger and better things, dropping their smithing hammers for war hammers and adventures. You, however … you have made it your life’s goal to provide and be recognized for your extravagant products. You will be known throughout the lands, but your base will be here: your own village where you grew up. Traders will reform their routes just to include your village so they can have your stuff. Go on, DREAM IT!
Just about everyone grows weary of being in one place though, so what kind of progression is there for someone who wishes to uproot? Well you can join a caravan, bringing with you specially designed mobile devices that allow you to craft on the move, or you can seek out a little bit larger town that has a marketplace stall you can move into. Perhaps their province even has resources yours doesn’t. You’ve heard about special metals and alloys being forged from ore only found in the deepest parts of a dragon’s lair. You’ve heard tales of wood that will bend to a singular axe made from a metal gifted to a town by their god. These things intrigue you, so get out there and explore!
Indeed; explore, learn and record! I propose to you a crafting class of a different nature: The scholar. Not like the scholars found in EQ2 or Lord of the Rings Online, but a crafting class that actually goes to ruins, sifts through the remains, finds old tomes and restores them to glean knowledge contained therein that no one else can interpret. These scholars will build the libraries of the world, storing the knowledge from aeons past and possibly discovering new forms of magic, new SCHOOLS of magic or … secrets of ancient enemies that explain their weaknesses and how past adventurers have vanquished them. These scholars will build the history of the world and record all they see and find so others may look upon them and learn as well. Knowledge is power and the Scholar holds the key.
Sorry, I had to throw that in there because I like the idea of a wandering crafter whose main purpose is to pick over battlefields long since left behind and ruins left to rot. Anywho … progression. It would make sense that employment by royalty (or someone just really wealthy) would be a good goal to have as a crafter, but I’d assume you’d also want something that allowed your wares to be on display at all times.
To be honest, the farthest point of progression I had thought of was actually working for the royal court. But in doing so, your brand would be inscribed somewhere on the armor so people could see your creation. There would be a limited amount of people doing this, chosen by the king / queen every so often when a new one was needed, so a fair amount of healthy competition is created in the crafting community. The specifics aren’t there yet, but I thought it would be fun.
As you can tell, this crafting system is designed to basically be the game for those who enjoy crafting. This was designed for a game that would separate crafting characters from adventuring characters so crafters could have their own place where they KNOW crafting was done as a whole, complete thought and not just an afterthought to adventuring. As such, this system exists side by side with adventuring, but neither side requires the other to function. Crafters can harvest all their own materials through the use of either overworld exploration, or special “resource gathering” instances that include series of puzzles and maneuvering tactics to be able to harvest in dangerous caves or slippery slopes. A minute amount of combat may be included, but it won’t be anything the crafter or perhaps a couple crafters couldn’t handle (should you choose to harvest in groups). The idea behind Vanguard’s group harvesting was a good one, me thinks and I’d like to see crafters actually cooperate instead of always undercutting and prodding each other.
I’m pretty sure interoperability between crafters is an important thing as well (as you can’t craft a ship without some cloth parts, some wooden parts and possibly some metal parts). Building those relationships is important as is your relationships with NPC factions (for the purposes of selling, special rewards and quests / jobs, etc).
Crafting can very much be its own game in conjunction with adventuring and adventurers can see fit to pick up the Awesome-sauce Sword of Much-Doom or use a crafter-made weapon that looks just as awesome and has the same stats. I’m not a huge fan of stat inflation or anything like that, so placing items that look different and have the same stats is fine by me. I really don’t give a shit if people whine, adventurers or crafters, that their weapons have the same stats as the other profession. GET OVER IT. STATS ARE NOT THE END ALL BE ALL OF A GAME.
In the end, making a crafting system separate is easy in the terms of coming up with ideas, but it’s complicated in figuring out EVERYTHING that a complete crafting system would take. I hope some of these ideas inspire thoughts of your own and as always, feel free to comment I ALWAYS leave out stuff I want to talk about and your comments, more often than not, spur those thoughts on.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
A few quick points that jumped out at me.
“With that in mind, we’ll approach this system with the idea that we want adventurers to be able to adventure without the help of crafters, should they choose to do so, but to be able to use the products crafters output should they choose to do so. The same also applies for the reverse.”
This has been a goal of many games — the difficulty lies in the balancing. If there is crafted armour and looted armour, neither is special. If one is better than the other, you kill demand for the less-good one (a problem in Vanguard beta), and if you swap that around, then the first becomes useless (a problem for crafters as VG release). After that you’re constantly trying to compensate and things can wobble out of control pretty quickly.
Not saying it’s not possible, just that it’s very, very difficult. It takes a LOT of development time to get that sort of stuff right, and most companies aren’t willing to cater quite that much to the crafting niche-market yet. (Am talking AAA-Western titles – I don’t really know the Asian market and the free games and whatnot.)
Again, with the “experiment to get better” system you have to put a lot of work in to make sure that a) you’re not expecting arcane knowledge of the PLAYERS, not all of whom may be old enough or educated enough to make the “right” kinds of guesses and b) it’s reasonably fair and c) it’s not an off-putting time- or resources-sink (while being enough of one).
Again, Vanguard was initially going to try to have exactly that kind of thing (a long time before release). Vanguard really *tried* to be innovative with its crafting system, whatever I may think of some of the designers involved and whatever else happened with the Sigil-meltdown.
It’s a difficult road to tread right now because most games are better at working (or re-working) combat than crafting, which ends up feeding back on itself somewhat. I’m not sure I buy the “there isn’t enough demand for complex crafting” argument, but then I don’t have the numbers so what do I know. What I *do* think is that:
a) it’s hard to measure how many people really want crafting, especially if you ask loaded questions (e.g. “Do you like crafting when you’re not fighting things?” and the like) and when you’re really only trying to see if you need to improve your combat,
b) there aren’t many DESIGNERS who are interested in crafting and non-combat systems (I’m still waiting for many of them to grow up, get families, and realise we can’t all raid 18 hours a day)
c) those designers who are interested probably have to spend a lot of time inventing new wheels, since it’s not something that’s been delved into all that much in MMOs. The standard is “get xyz resources, press button, watch bar, *poof*”
d) there aren’t many money-men who think crafting is interesting. It’s not wow, kapow, BOOM stuff to show prospective investors or customers. And yet, as with all other game systems, designing complex crafting takes money
and e) it’s probably quite hard to make a crafting system look attractive to the non-crafting nerds, and you need to attract some of *them* too if you want your stuff to work.
I’m rambling now, as usual.
A: You should always know who you’re catering to when coming up with an idea. You d your research, give a few polls here and there, trying to get a good sense of what the population wants. I wouldn’t suggest putting this system is a game where the audience isn’t focused on crafting at all. You have to create the allure to it WAY beforehand.
B: This is one of the things I keep going over in my mind and having been one of the people who raided 18 hours a day and no longer can, it falls within my scope of vision to make everyone important in the system, from the beginners to the experts, from the people who live online to the people who pop on for a few between RL chores.
C: That’s the idea though. We have to start somewhere and since quite a few people aren’t very impressed with the implementations of crafting in recent games, someone has to take it upon themselves to reinvent the wheel.
D: True, but you can spruce up crafting a lot to make it go BOOM, WOW and KAPOW
E: You can’t please everyone, so again you have to remember what group you’re focusing on. I agree you need a good mix, but that brings me to one of your earlier points, which is “why should I choose a crafted item over a dropped item or vice versa?”
Honestly I don’t think there should be much difference between the two. This lets adventurers adventure and crafters craft. What you do is change the aesthetic properties of each. Maybe the dropped items look a bit more dull than the crafted ones, but can be taken to a crafter to spruce them up, reforge them, etc. I’m not just talking about initial creation here, but the manipulation and upgrading of existing items as well. It’s a good mesh for crafting to be able to modify existing loot, especially with properties not found on dropped loot.
You’re absolutely correct in saying A LOT has to go into making a crafting system that’s robust and fun and these are some of the things you have to tackle. Balance has never appealed to me in the way other games focus on it. I don’t want everyone to be able to kill everyone. I want people to know how to survive given a situation, but not necessarily kill easily in any situation. Maybe they get the kill off, maybe not. Same with crafting, though to a lesser degree.
The interaction with crafting and adventuring can take many roads to accomplish what you want, but if you WANT to balance it, you take 2 properties and adjust them so 1 has 1 and 1 has the other. You either force a choice, or you allow the modification of one because they want the other.
That’s my opinion anyway
I’d play a Scholar. Of course, I’d want to freeform create and modify spells, if I’m out there learning new things about magic. Why bother learning in the first place, if it can’t provide something new and interesting for gameplay?
…I’ve got an article brewing, so I’ll put other thoughts there.
Well ya, that’s what I meant by discovering magic and whatnot; putting that to use to create spells. It’s ALMOST a la Asheron’s Call where I believe you could make spells, but the more people that used the spell, the less effective it became, or something like that.
But yea, I could see you as a Scholar. They also play into adventuring because rather than just having spoiler strats, you’d need a Scholar to actually FIND the weaknesses and whatnot for the ancient evils in the land.
Aye, by balance I didn’t mean make everyone equal in all things. I think what I mean is that whatever path a given player chooses (with a particular character, or at a particular time in that character’s life), it should be relatively balanced with other paths in terms of effort, time, reward, all that stuff we like about MMOs. It’s an overall sort of thing. A crafter shouldn’t have to (old-style examples) grind out 1,000,000 daggers to get to the same sort of “achievement point” as a fighter who only has to kill 10 foozles — extreme example, but I hope it makes sense.
Something else that occurs to me is that MMOs are quite good at giving out combat-game carrots, and spreading them out so that you’re pleased enough when you get one, but want to aim for the next one — but very few games are good at doing that with any other system. In most of them, crafting is just combat levelling with daggers instead of foozles. EVE comes to mind as something different, because you can start out small as a miner, but build a huge empire doing research, or manufacture, or mining, or just buying and reselling. There are visible goals to aim for (small to large) and reasonably clear rewards at the various stages (mine better stuff, use bigger ships, make more purchases, make more money, etc etc etc).
@Ysh Indeed, and the issue of having an empire as a crafter is that SO many other people are out there crafting that it’s tough for just 1 or 2 people to take over. Maybe it’s because games haven’t been made that way though. If there was a Renown system for crafting like there is in WAR for PVP, perhaps one of the rewards could be a shop in the castle where you sell to snobby, rich NPCs and wealthy PCs with access to the castle. Or perhaps your own large shop adjacent to the city that people can access.
But what happens when someone else gets that high in Renown? Can there be only 1 or 2 or 3 people? Do we limit that and make it a competition of sorts? I don’t mean anything like the High Warlord grind so many years ago in WOW, but some kind of competition between the crafters so they have something to chase.
I understand what you’re saying about the balance and I think, rather than looking at X number of things needed to progress, you need to look at time as a measurement. If it takes me 5 minutes to kill 10 foozles as an adventurer, but I can make 100 daggers in 5 minutes as a crafter, I shouldn’t progress as much just for making 10 daggers. I should have to make those 100 daggers.
That said, crafting SERIOUSLY needs a fun and innovative way to handle mass orders of things. I don’t think you should have to make 10000 daggers to be good enough to make a sword, but if you get an order from the castle to make 1000 swords for an upcoming war … well you gotta do it someway
I have my ideas though.
What would a town do with two dozen smiths each making 10000 daggers every fortnight, anyway? Where would the metal come from? Do they just sell them to each other then melt them down for the next batch?
And aye, I’d have fun as a scholar, and I can definitely see a combat support role for the same, if we even went that route. Nothing like actively needing to find a dynamic weak spot in a boss encounter… or even MAKING that weak spot through creative use of abilities.
Well that actually plays into the other systems we have worked out. The crafters could have unique combat abilities that make them useful in raids (though we’d have to redefine the way raids work, but I’ve done that as well). Blacksmiths could find weaknesses in specific armor or weapon types, stone masons could analyze the composition of the cave or fortress you’re in a set up a trap that would collapse a wall based on a weak spot, stuff like that.
Trust me, it’s all been through my head, heh heh.
As far as two dozen smiths making 10000 daggers: you wouldn’t. And therein lies a conundrum for me. Do you create only X amount of resources in the area and make the crafters fight, or do you give them the ability to import resources, etc?
You and I kind of addressed this issue with HM:O in that people would be able to see the amount of crafters and what kinds of crafters are in a specific city before starting there. They could also view crop reports, mineral reports, etc from the mines and decide what to roll based on educated information from the town.
Aye… but what of the player who can’t be bothered to figure that out in advance? What fudge factors are there to compensate for those who change their mind? We’re certainly looking for more than a WoWbot player, but even then, people might change and want to do something different, or the market might tank as new players come in. It’s not a backbreaker, just something to address.
One of the awesome things of a ’skill based’ game is that there’s no rerolling necessary if you mess up. You don’t choose a class (our game is classless) you just start somewhere as a crafter or adventurer. Once you read over the information and know what each town could use, you find someone who will sell you tools, maybe give you some insight and you’re on your way.
In the event someone doesn’t like the area they start in, I see no issues with a time-limited caravan pass to a city of their choice. That means they have X amount of time to decide whether or not they like the area they’re in and they have 1 chance to hop up and out for free, moving all their gear to a new city to set up. After that caravans cost money.
And if a player so grossly mismanages their assets, there should be some sort of “drudge work” for them to do (say, community service or the like) to work their way back up to either a caravan pass or their own business again. (And there we might even run into army conscripts, come to think of it.)
It’s not charity or going on the dole, it’s making people work.
Yep. Consequences for people being stupid. I like it.
Mmmh, I have been thinking about the whole “dropped vs crafted item” . Besides the “enemies only drop materials which must then be crafted”, which is a system I’m rather fond of, I thought also of the “quality vs quantity” stat-wise. Meaning that crafted items might have more special effects than dropped items of the same tier (or quality), but dropped have stronger effects. A crafted dagger having +2 damage, +2 mana and +3 life, while the dropped one has +4 mana and that’s all.
Or the other way around. That leaves people a choice between specialisation and broad-like improvement.
Another system I have read about is the “A Tale in the Desert” system (can’t find the blog entry where I read that, though), where you actually have a picture of what your item should look like, and you then chip at the block, giving the angle, strength and location of your blow. A given block of raw material can accept only a definite number of bloqws before being useless. When you feel you’re finished, the system tells you of close you are to the result (quality goes from 1 (veeeeery bad) to 9999 (veeeeery good). So you have to experiment to find how things get done. With of course item decay as you use them…
And finally, I’ve known 2 crafters friends, one in SW:G and one in WoW. Both became reknown in their craft (before the NGE, and before TBC) serverwise, and both became rather forgotten thereafter. In the first example, Crafters were clearly shafted and forgotten. In the second, dropped Item power-inflation and having 10 000 Balcksmithes at the same spot may be the cause…
Played A Tale in the Desert? I hear it’s doing quite well in it’s niche, only being developed by one guy.
@Katherine — aye, I’ve played a couple of the tellings. It’s mainly developed by one guy (and, back when I paid, a fair few volunteers who didn’t always get the credit they deserve, or so I heard, but that may just be drama-llamaing). It *does* depart from traditional MMOs in many ways, though I felt inordinately betrayed when levels made an appearance a couple of tellings ago (back in 2006 or 7).
Also, “crafting” either involved an utterly ludicrous amount of grinding (harvesting and making) or AFK-grinding (same), *or* you had to know enough CAD to figure out how to “make” a shovel blade. It’s hard to explain, but it wasn’t fulfilling for me either.
That said, ATITD is to be commended for at least TRYING to do something new and original, and it has many very good aspects too (It’s just easier to point out flaws than good points) — one of the major ones for me was the ability to join a myriad guilds and interest groups rather than being limited to one.