Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Outside of the actual crafting (button mashing + inventory drag and drop game), I actually really liked the way EQ1 did crafting. I think it was a good idea to have tradeskills basically tied into raid drops (elemental armor combines then later the gear with specific aug slots, probably many more examples). You had epic tradeskill quests like the Velious shawl and the PoP earring. You had tiny benefits like stat food/drink. Class niche items (arrows/poisons). Low crafting requirements for other quests (Dain ring, definitely more that I can"t think of). There were items that were good for non top tier raiders (lower tier PoP bows, cultural armor). The "must-have" items were very limited - elemental bows at their time and the gnomish vanishing device, and later on the alchemy potions.

Yet despite all the things it was used for, it absolutely was not required in any way, shape, or form, and crafters were a small niche of the population. Being a skill capped blacksmith or tailor was a rare thing, and you could be known for it since there were needs for it.

Now, if you took EQs rewards and stuck it on top of WoW"s actual crafting then I have no doubt that a much higher percentage would be maxed level. Part of the rarity of EQ crafters was the mindless clicking (or using an illegal bot). Maybe Vanguard"s crafting with EQ"s rewards is a good combo.

I agree with Zehn"s points.

Miele said:

Keep in mind that crafting should be a complement, not a main activity: with this I mean that I may spend anywhere from 10% to 20% of my online time to craft, because it"s cool, profitable and mildly entertaining, but the moment I require the 2 hours/night players to spend 1 hour+ to advance their profession, I"m on the wrong track as developer (imo)..

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Why?

Why can"t crafting be a main activity, and possibly an end game activity for me, while you go off and fight your dragons?

Because I said my view of crafting is biased

With regard to "Why?" can"t it be an end-game activity?

Because not enough players find crafting to be end-game amounts of fun. It may be true, or it may just be a social barrier, but in either case it must be overcome and to do so would require a hefty sum of money and production time for something which could very well be a complete flop.

Also, having two games in one game is, in many ways, a waste. You want every player to play every bit of content you make, and even more so, you want them to enjoy it all. If half your players play the crafting end-game and half play the adventuring end-game then your entire player-base is only playing half of your [end]game, which is not the optimal efficiency for which content designer"s products could be used, and thus an inferior idea.

The two games can coexist, but in coexisting they ought to become one combined game, lest you"ve wasted production efforts.

Another random thought here, inspired by the interview with Salvatore above which got me thinking back to my early EQ days, within the first weeks the game launched when people thought Bronze Armor was amazing.

In WoW, you can basically find a magic weapon lying around in the bushes. You kill a boar, it"s probably going to drop a magic two-handed sword.

What if that weren"t the case? Let"s say magic items are actually rare, and only found deep inside dungeons or sometimes given as rewards for major quests (instead of practically every quest you ever do in WoW).

I"m not saying players shouldn"t ever find loot (which would be boring) and I"m not saying we should go back to the EQ days where we ran around half naked until we could afford gear. But what if the sword you loot from the orc is just that, an orcish sword? Maybe it has higher DPS or even some type of defensive value that is higher than your rusty shortsword, but otherwise its just a sword.

If you wanted a magic weapon, you"d have to brave a dungeon or undertake some particularly important quests for NPCs powerful enough to have such items. This doesn"t mean you can"t get magic items at a lower level, just that you"ll actually have to, yknow, go on an adventure to get one, as it should be. They"d be a bit more rare at low levels, but still obtainable.

So, what"s my point and how does this have anything to do with crafting? Well, if the game is like this from the beginning then crafting has a clear purpose right from the start. Well crafted items are obviously going to be better than the random orc sword you picked up. At first, crafted items would be the things a lot of players were saving their coppers for, and I think that"s a good thing.

Then, they start hitting dungeons and it feels awesome to get magic items because they haven"t even seen one yet. It"s better than the crafted stuff, it"s exciting, it feels like an accomplishment. Magic items become more common as you progress along because you"re undergoing more epic adventures and delving into more ancient and dangerous places.

How does crafting keep up then? The dungeons would also have crafter-only drops. The shards of a broken blade, an ancient broken relic, mysterious crystals, a strange glowing ore in the depths - these types of things would allow the crafter to then go back and create items that are on par with what is in the dungeon, only they"d be droppable. You"d have people going back to dungeons just to get crafting materials, which would help the other up and coming players who are there for the first time.

This would go all the way up to raiding, where the crafter could get the tooth of the dragon like was mentioned earlier and, after collecting enough materials (which admittedly should take some time) would be able to craft a raid-level item.

Basically, there"s this idea that crafted items can be good but never as good as something you would find in the dungeon, and I don"t see why this is. If you make the materials rare enough that the effort is on par with an adventurer getting the item, I don"t see why it hurts to let the crafter make one.

I like your idea however I wonder if the masses of MMO fans haven"t been spoiled by big numbers (on items) over the years.

All it would really do is just stave off Mudflation that much longer. Once you started getting magic items, that"s it. You"re right back to where you were before with every DIKU mud since EQ.

Vatoreus said:

All it would really do is just stave off Mudflation that much longer. Once you started getting magic items, that"s it. You"re right back to where you were before with every DIKU mud since EQ.

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True, but I think it would have a significant effect on that initial vanilla leveling experience and allow crafting to really solidify early on. It"d be important, it"d be rewarding, and a lot of people would be interested in doing it. This is essentially the opposite of how crafting feels in WoW/LOTRO because even when you are low level the stuff you make that is supposed to be intended for those levels is garbage to you. It means that leveling the profession is just a grind because you only want to get to the point where you might be able to make something good.

I think countering that is far more important than worrying about "stir the soup" minigames or bejeweled clones. It"s more important to be able to have an impact on other players as a crafter.

Crafting has to be broken up into multiple parts conceptually:

Crafting as a procedural system;

Crafting as itemization and the impact on in-game economy;

Crafting as meta-game.


MMOs, lean primarily on the role of the player as adventurer. What will really help to break the DIKU model, at least conceptually, is to allow players to pick a relevant roleother than adventurer(or in addition to adventurer) to participate in quests, world events, and so on.

I liked Vanguard"s approach, even if it wasn"t fully fleshed out, of the role of Diplomats in "flipping switches" to help adventurers, crafters and diplomats gain bonuses. Allow there to be other roles for "flipping switches". Crafters could fill this role by providing crafted goods to local militia to stave off attacks (with the help of adventurers of course); train NPC crafters as well as receive training from them to increase crafting benefits for a city (maybe give a temporary bonus to other crafters or decrease crafting times on complex recipes); crafting quests that actually helped other spheres of play access new questlines or content, and so on. Some of these have been accomplished to a very minor degree in other MMOs, but have by far been the exception.

Ironically, the "anything could drop phat lewt!" was one of the selling points of early WoW. It was a situation almost completely foreign to EverQuest players and only briefly explored by other games up to that point.

While I agree with you on principle that a boar probably shouldn"t be walking around with an axe stuck to it"s tusks just waiting for the happy go luck adventurer to push it into his brain before pulling it out, it really is a cosmetic argument.

This would go all the way up to raiding, where the crafter could get the tooth of the dragon like was mentioned earlier and, after collecting enough materials (which admittedly should take some time) would be able to craft a raid-level item.

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Why not just have the dragon drop the goddamn in the first place then? Why add an extra step? Not to redirect this train to a "random loot is a terrible game mechanic" conversation but unless you"re just trying to alleviate the problems inherrant to random loot you"re not really accomplishing much.

It feels like a major, -major- copout. "We"re going to control the rarity of an raid-level crafted item by just making the materials drop off the same shit you kill in raids, yay balance!"

Why even bother?

UnchainedAcolyte said:

Some of these have been accomplished to a very minor degree in other MMOs, but have by far been the exception.

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The problem invariably is it still takes time to generate content for. Most of these companies have a hard enough time as is generating enough adventuring content to fill our needs.

Even the single-player genre has struggled with this for ages. Oblivion/Morrowind were supposed to be the paragon "NEVER RAISE A SWORD TO WIN THE GAME!" type adventures but in the end who didn"t pick up a sword and whack around some goblins?

I agree though, I"d like to see the idea evolved more. Diplomacy is too good a concept to let it die with VanGuard.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Why not just have the dragon drop the goddamn in the first place then? Why add an extra step? Not to redirect this train to a "random loot is a terrible game mechanic" conversation but unless you"re just trying to alleviate the problems inherrant to random loot you"re not really accomplishing much.

It feels like a major, -major- copout. "We"re going to control the rarity of an raid-level crafted item by just making the materials drop off the same shit you kill in raids, yay balance!"

Why even bother?

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Because the tooth (or whatever the dropped item might be) is a component that can be used to make multiple items. It"s up to the crafter what he or she chooses to make with it (or what the guild asks them to make), whereas if just the item itself dropped that is the only choice.

Yeah, it"s a way to alleviate issues with RNG. We already know that you and I disagree about the RNG, because I like it to a certain extent. I think it can be too punishing when people have long runs of bad luck though, so a system like this helps solve that.

Maybe your Rogue has had terrible luck with daggers, so the first tooth is going to be made into a new one for him. The next one might go to someone else as a completely different item. Eventually, when no one needed the crafted items anymore, they"d simply have a role similar to the current BOEs in WoW and become something the guild auctions off for funds.

The key is making the components rare enough that the crafted items don"t just become so ridiculously common that everyone just buys expensive crafted weapons instead of hoping for a raid drop. The main difference would be crafting components might drop from every raid boss, whereas the weapon you want might only drop from one boss. The benefit of the craft version is you get to pick what it is once you get those mats.

Zehn - Vhex said:

Diplomacy is too good a concept to let it die with VanGuard.

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It"s a good idea - but I don"t like the implementation. If they were going to make it a card game (and Lord knows I love me some MMO + CCG mechanics) and they did, they should have gone all out and made it a full blown card game. Think Legends of Norrath or MTG or whatever.

Zehn - Vhex said:

The problem invariably is it still takes time to generate content for.

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Exactly. That"s what kills me about meta-games in adventure games - there is only so much development time, and you want the elements your game focuses on to be smooth, functional, and as polished as possible for a first impression. Sadly, I just loves me some crafting and alternate ways to affect my game world.

Not sure if it would be plausible, but with all of the talk of Free Realms and other microtransaction/alternate subscription models would charging for different meta-game classes and content would be a viable approach?

For example:

Adventuring and basic crafting content - 12.95/mo USD

Adventuring and full crafting (or 1 other meta-game spheres" content) content - 14.95/mo USD

Adventuring, 2 meta-game spheres" content - 17.95/mo USD

Adventuring and 3 meta-game spheres" content - 19.95/mo USD

The additional revenue could be used to fund the teams working on specific content, and allow the meta-game to be a more viable part of the overall MMO.

I agree that adventuring should always be at the forefront of a game designed for the masses. Creative and fun meta-gaming, however, would be the content to move MMOs from "game" to "world", and broaden the appeal, in my opinion.

Vatoreus said:

All it would really do is just stave off Mudflation that much longer. Once you started getting magic items, that"s it. You"re right back to where you were before with every DIKU mud since EQ.

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really most of the magic items just like the mundane items that fall off most mobs are just vender trash anyway. So the idea that you need to do a dungeon or kill a boss to get the "good stuff" is already in play.

Grave said:

Because the tooth (or whatever the dropped item might be) is a component that can be used to make multiple items. It"s up to the crafter what he or she chooses to make with it (or what the guild asks them to make), whereas if just the item itself dropped that is the only choice.

Yeah, it"s a way to alleviate issues with RNG. We already know that you and I disagree about the RNG, because I like it to a certain extent. I think it can be too punishing when people have long runs of bad luck though, so a system like this helps solve that.

Maybe your Rogue has had terrible luck with daggers, so the first tooth is going to be made into a new one for him. The next one might go to someone else as a completely different item. Eventually, when no one needed the crafted items anymore, they"d simply have a role similar to the current BOEs in WoW and become something the guild auctions off for funds.

The key is making the components rare enough that the crafted items don"t just become so ridiculously common that everyone just buys expensive crafted weapons instead of hoping for a raid drop. The main difference would be crafting components might drop from every raid boss, whereas the weapon you want might only drop from one boss. The benefit of the craft version is you get to pick what it is once you get those mats.

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Don"t they already do this with tokens you can just turn in?

Greyform said:

Don"t they already do this with tokens you can just turn in?

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Sure, but by making it take crafting you reward a player for working on crafting. One of the things that was nice about EQ/EQ2 was that we had a person who was amazing at the market and tradeskilling and house building and they really helped out the guild, both in terms of progression with the tradeskills/money and with morale with the house shit. Fast forward to WoW and there"s no real equivalent role for her, so she quit pretty quickly. If you suck at raiding/pvp there"s no real way for you to contribute to your character or your guild. Part of this is a lack of slack within raids (taking an extra body to EQ raids was rarely an issue, regardless of how bad they are), but I like the idea of having real alternatives to slaying teh dragon (or column hugging!) when playing the game.

As much as we all have become spreadsheet jockeys, most of us still have the little nuggets of stereotypical fantasy RPG mentality in us somewhere.

Hell, this is the whole reason everyone wants to be The Hero, not just a hero.

Crafting (or having crafted for us) a dagger from a dragons tooth, or armor/shield from hide or frost protection cloak from the fur of the giant burrowing ice blah blah blah is still very much a box many of us like to check off on our way through the game.

Sure, it could just be a token system by another name. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with letting crafters feel mighty too.

Some of this is just polish issues. Dragon dropping dagger vs dragon dropping tooth that turns into dagger. Random_boar_04 having a chance to drop an axe vs Uncommon Named Wounded_Boar_02 having a chance to drop an axe. Predatory_Raptor_05 dropping plate chest piece vs Predatory_Raptor_05"s death triggering an emote and a visible trail back to its nest which has a plate chest piece in the detritus.

I"d rather play the game with the 2nd option of the above.

Tearofsoul said:

This is good read:Exclusive Interview with 38 Studios" R.A. Salvatore

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I started drooling a bit when he said Forgotten Realms MMO I have to admit.

I can"t wait to see what he"s come up with for Copernicus. I"m not even a lore nerd, but I"m extremely interested in the world he"s building because I know it"ll be excellent. Makes me wonder if the game will be taking more of a EQ route(ie. slower leveling) than the WOW route by his comments in that interview.

10,000 years of Lore...the lore nerds are going to be having multiple orgasms over that.

Same here regarding the Salvatore interview. You need good lore to give a game world meaning and direction. Yes, you need good in-game systems and class design, but quests, races, classes, and so forth need to have meaning and purpose within the perspective of the game world, and it needs to be well-developed.

I"ve beaten this horse to death, but I would have stayed in Vanguard far longer had there been good lore, especially surrounding the races, locations (Vault of Heroes, etc.) and notable NPCs.

Here"s another vote for slower leveling, or even the option to suspend experiencea laEQ2 for the option of exploring more of the game world before growing out of it.

That and mentoring (EQ2). Allowing interaction between new and established community members is important, and should be fun for both.

UnchainedAcolyte said:

Here"s another vote for slower leveling, or even the option to suspend experiencea laEQ2 for the option of exploring more of the game world before growing out of it.

That and mentoring (EQ2). Allowing interaction between new and established community members is important, and should be fun for both.

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The mentoring system in EQ2 is in my opinion the best MMO feature to come to the industry with this "generation" of games. The only catch to it is, there needs to be a reason to "mentor" down and go through content that won"t benefit you. Yes I know EQ2 gives you a slight reason to through AA XP. A mentor system would never work in a game like WoW where there is absolutely nothing to be gained (OMG ACHIEVMENTS!? ) from doing old content.