Problem with every mmorpg

dyadestrant

dyadestrant

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mkopec said:
I never cared for crafting in games, but I can see the appeal to others. I just want to kill shit and collect good lootz. The thing thats missing in todays games is that most loot is boring excel sheet +3 bullshit that is meaningless. Bring back hand crafted good loot randomly spawn that you can actually see on the mob. I want to have a reason to go adventure and seek out out of the way places and see what drops there. Most games today have none of this. Simple zone wide loot tables with a few rares thrown in that are and extra+2 or some shit. Boring and gay.
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I always wanted to like crafting, but never could get in to it. I don't know if it even qualifies as crafting, but the only kind of crafting I like it Monster Hunter's where in lieu of actual weapon/armor drops, they drop the materials needed to craft a weapon or piece of armor.

Though, I'll always prefer EQ's way of handling loot.
 
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Ukerric

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I'd be OK with an items getting better the more you craft it, sorta like UO did it. A GM armor smith produced better of the same type of armor than that of a journeyman, and could better use more rare materials.
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That's kind of ok, but it also still means that you don't sell anything except the best, and you still have to grind stuff by the boatloads and throw it away (because no one will want to buy your newb armor).

I think it's in EVE, but the more you've invested in crafting, the less your crafting costs. That's a good model: If you're a lowbie, your steel breastplate costs 40 bars of steel. If you're a GM, it costs 25.

There's also the model in which there's no skill check whatsoever. What distinguishes the newbie crafter from the expert is that the expert has a lot of recipes, including some more efficient ones, while the newbie has only a few. It requires a very different paradigm of recipe acquisition ("research"), and change the whole idea of crafting from the mindless "click to make, fill xp bar to next level/get skill pt until next tier" that almost every MMO has to one that values logistics (acquiring crafting components) and puzzles (figuring out valid recipes).
 
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Ukerric said:
That's kind of ok, but it also still means that you don't sell anything except the best, and you still have to grind stuff by the boatloads and throw it away (because no one will want to buy your newb armor).
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Make GM armor break at relatively the same rate as newb armor, and cheaper armor will still sell. I remember buying bone armor in UO, even though it wasn't as good as black GM armor, but was good enough to run through some lich caves, was cheap, light, and you could carry a few sets.

I think it's in EVE, but the more you've invested in crafting, the less your crafting costs. That's a good model: If you're a lowbie, your steel breastplate costs 40 bars of steel. If you're a GM, it costs 25.
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WOW does this to, but you have to do random shit to rank up, and isn't intrinsic to crafting items itself (for 90% of things). And ironically, sometimes there's no difference between rank 2 and 3 for some reason.

There's also the model in which there's no skill check whatsoever. What distinguishes the newbie crafter from the expert is that the expert has a lot of recipes, including some more efficient ones, while the newbie has only a few. It requires a very different paradigm of recipe acquisition ("research"), and change the whole idea of crafting from the mindless "click to make, fill xp bar to next level/get skill pt until next tier" that almost every MMO has to one that values logistics (acquiring crafting components) and puzzles (figuring out valid recipes).
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Final Fantasy had something where timing in mouse clicks determined effectiveness, and you skill made the bar go slower, to ease in precision. Most of these all sound tedious.

WOW is making crafting basically useless, since it's clearly a pain in the ass to try and reinvent it every expansion. There hasn't been a game where crafting wasn't equally hard to say raiding, and provided similar items, or at least in some way supplemented. +200 stat buffs in WOW are negligible, and not interesting. And it seems relatively impossible for them to come up with interesting and unique procs that are balanced.
 
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Daidraco

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I dont know how I feel about all this. I mean me personally, I hate durability with breaking. I think its about as fun as a needle in the eye. If Im in a group of friends and my sword breaks and I didnt bring a spare, am I happy? Are they happy? Is anyone having fun at that point? I mean its just a tacked on system to encourage the economy and keep crafters busy. Shit is the socialism of the MMORPG world all because someone wants to be an assembly line worker in an MMO.

I honestly cant think of how to alter the system so that isnt even slightly annoying. I really have no clue why WoW even has repairs anymore. You make so much gd gold in a couple hours that its just an annoying fucking relic of the past. You could do upgrades as often as WoW, but that takes any type of flavor out of any of the items available. Bind on Equip is pretty useful and goes a long way towards being a remedy, but now its just disenchant fodder for the next piece of armor in 2 hours.

So in my opinion, arm chair that. Find a way to make crafting relevant without inconveniencing any player, and instead, making the player want to work with the market.
 
gshurik

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XIV 1.0 had a pretty meaningful crafting/gathering metagame. You could make a lot of money crafting for 2 reasons:

1) Crafted gear was BiS
2) Not many people played so no chinese bots.

These days in 2.0 crafting is still relatively profitable, and gathering is profitable too to a much lesser margin. The problem with XIV 2.0 is that gil is completely and utterly meaningless. Once you've bought a player home and furnished it gil becomes absolutely meaningless unless you want or need to buy runs.

Currency is so hard to get working correctly in an MMO because too much reliance makes gold buying too strong, but no reliance and you feel like doing anything to make money is pointless.
 
Penance

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Daidraco said:
I dont know how I feel about all this. I mean me personally, I hate durability with breaking. I think its about as fun as a needle in the eye. If Im in a group of friends and my sword breaks and I didnt bring a spare, am I happy? Are they happy? Is anyone having fun at that point? I mean its just a tacked on system to encourage the economy and keep crafters busy. Shit is the socialism of the MMORPG world all because someone wants to be an assembly line worker in an MMO.

I honestly cant think of how to alter the system so that isnt even slightly annoying. I really have no clue why WoW even has repairs anymore. You make so much gd gold in a couple hours that its just an annoying fucking relic of the past. You could do upgrades as often as WoW, but that takes any type of flavor out of any of the items available. Bind on Equip is pretty useful and goes a long way towards being a remedy, but now its just disenchant fodder for the next piece of armor in 2 hours.

So in my opinion, arm chair that. Find a way to make crafting relevant without inconveniencing any player, and instead, making the player want to work with the market.
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Of course repairing equipment is inconvenient. You could say dying is an inconvenience too. Who does it help? You, your group? If you die repeatedly who is having fun? Inconveniences are put into games to make them more challenging. Failing at something should make it not fun. Inventory management and equipment management is a form of a challenge. If you have shitty organizational skills, are not prepared, or do not have the knowledge then you are failing at these mechanics. After a certain point are we going to dumb down our MMO's to where we take every inconvenience out of the game. Fast travel exists in pretty much everything now because people hated having to travel. Death is pretty much inconsequential in any MMO these days. Exploration is non existent in the form of walking along something rare (due to instancing).
 
Pancreas

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Mmos opened up dozens of virtual spaces for people to interact, only to slowly choke the life out of that interaction.

Mmos tend to have too many systems that don't work smoothly with each other. Simplification of the mechanisms a player must keep track of will enhance the experience, provided the remaining mechanics require nuanced input from the player.

First person shooters tend to have only a few systems to keep track of, but allow for a large amount of player exploration within those systems and skill development.

Levels only serve to segregate a player from upper tiers of play. This contrasts the players impact on the world in the early game to late game. At least in theory. Once other segregation mechanics, such as zones, are used and player impact neutered for the sake of world stability then the purpose of levels becomes lost and they now serve only to stratify the player base.

If a game has levels, then it should remove other restrictions to play and reward high level characters with greater agency in the game space.

Otherwise levels create a game that plays like an echo. Each level of experience feels incredibly similar and less impactful than the last.

Having said that, my ideal game would be something like this:
No levels. Character development comes in the form of stats, skills, equipment and faction.

Stats points are earned by completing in game actions, (crafting, casting, sneaking, hitting things with a sword ect.) with a diminishing curve. Each action contributes to one or multiple stat types. Failures are rewarded to a lesser degree.

Skills determine the success rate of many actions. Skills have a minimum level and maximum level, both of which are determined by a corresponding base stats' current value.

Skill points are earned for completing objectives within the world. Such as capturing a castle, finding and looting a dungeon, avenging a wrongful death.

Skill points are used to bridge the gap between minimum skill and maximum skill levels. The higher a skill's value, the more skill points it costs to increase.

In order for a character to train a skill they must have access to someone who can instruct them.

Most skills can be trained to a basic level by finding a trainer and hiring them. Higher level trainers are harder to access, often requiring allegiance to specific faction or groups or finding them hidden in the world.

Equipment is used to perform actions. It includes everything a player might wear. Without the proper equipment many skills are unusable.

Equipment is disposable. It comes in various qualities that can modify action success but nothing is permanent.

A character can become a member of various groups that will provide a base level and type of equipment. The more exclusive the group or the better funded the better the equipment.

Each group is tied to a location. These groups can be displaced if they are defeated.

Player made factions can perform all of the functions of an npc faction and usurp their position within the world. The only difference is that certain npc factions can't be completely destroyed, only suppressed.

Every faction is accessible to a player, however the road to some factions will make the journey back to neutral ground very difficult should a player change their mind.

There are no classes. Only titles such as Dalen City guard, mercenary band of the crow, sorcerer of the black tower,

Within each title can be several ranks. Such as captain or recruit.

Players are free to join and leave these groups taking what they have learned with them. They will lose access to further training and replacement equipment when they do.

As for gameplay. The game should play like an action game with emphasis on player input and timing to succeed with skills modifying these actions or providing access to new ones

Every swing or cast should be directed by the player. Only one or two good hits should be needed to dispatch an equally powerful foe

The best defense is not getting hit, with shields and armor being a last resort
 
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Pyros

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a_skeleton_03 said:
Cosmetics.
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FFXIV crafting is basically this, and raid progression items. You can make like gear for leveling and what not but shit isn't worth it, everyone gets free gear from quests and you level too fast that it's not even worth buying the gear at mats cost, and obviously people sell newbie gear at high costs.

However once you get to endgame crafting, there's a lot of stuff to make.

The actual combat stuff you can craft in endgame is relevant because of its unique perk(basically pve gear can have 1 materia added to it, while crafted gear can have up to 5materia slots). This is relevant for progression because you can add hp to your jewelry which otherwise doesn't have any, and increasing your hp this way lets you survive mechanics/fuckups that you otherwise wouldn't when you don't have good enough gear for the raid(especially when going for world/server first, due to weekly caps on everything making it slow to gear otherwise, you won't have the damage aspect but having the health and playing well is generally good enough).

Everything else, and it's the bulk of the money, is cosmetics shit, from your usual robe/armor/whatever that looks cool to housing items. A lot of that crafting requires special rare items that drop from various pve content to incentivize people to do shit they might not bother doing otherwise but those people then need to find a crafter for their items, the cosmetic stuff doesn't only drop, most of it is actually crafted(only notable cosmetics that are drop only are mounts).

Overall it works pretty decently, crafting is interesting and relevant and makes a lot of money. The downside is there's basically nothing to buy with money other than crafting stuff or paying people to run you through content. So you basically craft stuff so you can craft more stuff, and it becomes a bit pointless.
 
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Daidraco said:
I dont know how I feel about all this. I mean me personally, I hate durability with breaking. I think its about as fun as a needle in the eye. If Im in a group of friends and my sword breaks and I didnt bring a spare, am I happy? Are they happy? Is anyone having fun at that point? I mean its just a tacked on system to encourage the economy and keep crafters busy. Shit is the socialism of the MMORPG world all because someone wants to be an assembly line worker in an MMO.

I honestly cant think of how to alter the system so that isnt even slightly annoying. I really have no clue why WoW even has repairs anymore. You make so much gd gold in a couple hours that its just an annoying fucking relic of the past. You could do upgrades as often as WoW, but that takes any type of flavor out of any of the items available. Bind on Equip is pretty useful and goes a long way towards being a remedy, but now its just disenchant fodder for the next piece of armor in 2 hours.

So in my opinion, arm chair that. Find a way to make crafting relevant without inconveniencing any player, and instead, making the player want to work with the market.
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I have the exact same complaint with how Zelda handles this. Shit is way too fragile, and you have very limited inventory. That's critically annoying. I don't mind having multiple weapons to switch between if the loss of effectiveness is slow, and inventory space isn't insanely limited. Though getting newer, better pieces all the time, kind of negates this whole concept. I don't mind a slow degradation of equipment, its effectiveness even declining, it feels more realistic. The more I slam my sword, the less sharp it is, the more my armor gets hit, the less it holds together. But even a blunt sword does significant damage. Though a hammer that the head falls off results in a stick. A dagger smashing into armor should be damaged. Repairing it should be a process, and for the hammer example, you might need a new hilt entirely. A dagger that has been refined and rebuilt, smelted over and over, could become stronger, and sharper, with better metals, due to higher crafting prestige. Carrying a supply of varying strength daggers should only matter if it won't survive for long treks, or deep Dungeon diving. You can use weaker, less effective daggers for the trash leading up to harder enemies, then you pull out you big, badass dagger of slaying. Magical enchants of indestructible whatever, could be time limited, class, or profession specific.

It becomes a complex thing that diverges from what a lot of folks want to do in an mmo game. Just mindlessly smash monsters, and get newer betterer loots. But it takes away from the potential of having an "artifact weapon" that you've carried, slayed a million mobs with, become very proficient with, repaired, upgraded, enhanced, and possibly giving the player an affinity or attachment to said item. Weapons and armor shouldn't be legendary on their own, they should have to earn that status. Even the weapon that drops from Boss #257, could be upgraded, or smelt the materials from boss #300, making that original weapon all the more powerful.

I dunno. Farming the same boss, hoping to get random drop X is just as annoying.
 
Ukerric

Ukerric

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Daidraco said:
I dont know how I feel about all this. I mean me personally, I hate durability with breaking.
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It all boils to a main decision in your game: Do you want a crafting economy or not?

There's a reason why the only professions that "survive" in modern WoW are the 4 professions that make consumables: Cooking, Alchemy, Enchanting, Jewelcrafting. They all make items that you need to repurchase regularly (every time you get a new qualifying item in the last two). And everyone is a cook so the first one doesn't count.

If your gear is not a consumable (i.e. does not break), then it won't be a part of any crafting economy.
 
Khane

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LW and Blacksmithing make money through consumables as well like items that prevent daze/allow you to gather while mounted. Tailoring was usually able to make money through bags but I don't think Legion introduced a new bag that was better than the Hexweave bags. And inscription was the biggest money maker by far until this expansion, but it can still make some pretty decent money with respec tomes and the various QoL glyphs.

And of course the gathering skills were big money makers this expansion as well. In fact, Alchemy was shit for making money for most of the expansion outside of getting lucky early with the good rank 3 flask/pot recipes. Prolonged Power became a good money maker later though.
 
Utnayan

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This genre is dead. Stick the fork in it. It isn't coming back, and the people responsible for destroying it, are the same one's playing the shell game with you now. It's ridiculous.

F2P models and micro-transactions will kill the crafting market regardless of if it's in game items or cosmetics. Hell, even mods now are being put behind paywalls. Nothing is sacred any longer. If it can be monetized, it will.

The only thing that will stop it is to quit funding it.
 
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Fight

Fight

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Crafting sucks. It often ends up being an obligation, a way for the developers to remove currency from the world, or a time-sink. More often than not, it is a lot better use of your time to go run a dungeon, get exp, and a piece of loot that is better than a shitty blacksmith could make anyways.

The only decent crafting experience was Vanilla WoW. They made crafting a different from just creating gear that you could just as easily get from mob drops or quests.

For instance, jewelry enhanced your bad-ass BIS gear, didn't try to compete with it. Tinkering gave you access to some gadgets that would you to Resurrect fallen comrades regardless of our class. Alchemy gave you potions that would send your stats through the roof, for specific raid encounters.

That is a successful version of crafting to me.
 
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Khane

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Jewelcrafting was not in Vanilla. And it was called Engineering, not Tinkering.

Alchemy potions did shit in vanilla and the flasks did not persist through death and required a very rare only 1-2 spawns available in the entire world at a time herb. Alchemy was used more for resistance/absorb potions than stat potions.

You seem to be confusing vanilla crafting with TBC crafting.
 
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Daidraco

Daidraco

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Khane said:
Jewelcrafting was not in Vanilla. And it was called Engineering, not Tinkering.

Alchemy potions did shit in vanilla and the flasks did not persist through death and required a very rare only 1-2 spawns available in the entire world at a time herb. Alchemy was used more for resistance/absorb potions than stat potions.

You seem to be confusing vanilla crafting with TBC crafting.
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Everything Khane said is right. I know, I farmed those fucking herbs. God I fucking hated prepping for Ragnaros.
 
Pyros

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They made flasks last through death sometimes during vanilla though, forgot when but by Naxx it was there. Maybe AQ40 too, maybe earlier I don't remember since I didn't flask until Naxx I think. MC and I think possibly BWL was fire absorb pots though, if any pot at all. Shit wasn't really that hard, at least by the time they launched on EU, iirc Ragnaros right away at launch on NA was buggy/unkillable/overtuned but by the time we got there it was fine and didn't take long to kill.
 
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