I love crafting. It doesn’t matter what game I play, chances are I’m going to get involved. That doesn’t mean I like every type of crafting though. One of my least favourite crafting methods is the one you find in World of Warcraft, where you click one button to combine, and wait around until everything in your inventory is used up. It feels very hands free, and it’s meant to be that way. The ‘hard’ part involves collecting the resources, usually through combat (if you’re going to collect it yourself) and adventuring.
My absolutely favourite way to craft, was in Vanguard. Crafting was its own sphere, and did not rely on adventuring at all. You could do work orders where you were given the supplies you needed and only had to purchase the vendor sold components, and this was the ideal way to level, saving your hard earned harvests for actual useful items. It was difficult, complicated, and you would take pride in your creations. Through the use of powders and dusts you could customize every piece a bunch of different ways, and of course you could make pieces more rare than others. One of the best things about this system for me personally was that it wasn’t timed, like it is in EQ2. In EQ2 I feel like I have to constantly sit at the craft bench and not step away to answer the phone or go get the door, because my craft will fail. It’s a timed mechanic, and while I enjoy the process of crafting, I dislike being so tied to the desk as I craft. Sometimes I need to step away.
Crafting in WildStar is complex, but I feel it leans too much on the side of RNG rather than skill. I don’t like having to compete with RNG, because I typically (always) lose. ArcheAge crafting matches that of World of Warcraft, where it’s just a finger click to combine items in your inventory, so long as you have the materials available. There is a bit of RNG as you have a chance to “auto upgrade” an item as you craft it, but the system isn’t complex by any means.
So what are your favourite methods of crafting? Would you prefer to buy from crafters and not create your own items? Players who choose to harvest and sell those goods to crafters can make a nice amount of money in a balanced game, spending the money they earn from selling craft components back on crafters for their finished goods. Of course if you’re like me you have to DO ALL THE THINGS and so you’re both a crafter and an adventurer.
Yeah, I “forgot to play” the game, decided it wasn’t grabbing me and let it go for a few weeks. Went back and decided to just sell off all my crafting stuff so I wouldn’t be tempted back into it and now I’m leveling in the adventuring game instead and having a blast. And jonesing to start crafting again……
To me the ideal I think would be the SWG model, from everything I hear about it. Unfortunately I never played it in its heyday so I never had the chance to actually experience it. The way Arislyn describes the Ryzom crafting sounds pretty fun too.
I also liked the way crafting worked in Final Fantasy XIV in which was a bit of a mini-game where you tried to make the best item quality possible without breaking it during crafting. It was also fun in that harvesting and crafting were classes in themselves, that you could level independently of other classes and switch to them just by changing your equipped weapon. Unfortunately Final Fantasy XIV 2.0 wasn’t for me so I never went back to it. /sigh
The type of crafting I like the least is the one where it is just click a button and you are done. Specially if to advance in the crafting level and/or to get the materials you need you also need to level the adventuring class. I prefer them to be separate and each being their own path of leveling.
Ohh PKudude99 that is dangerous to say to me!!! Now I want to play…
For me, I’m with you on Vanguard. I especially liked that their leveling mechanic let you make things without actually using materials or making anything that clogged up your bags — just had to have your reagents, was all.
Closest I’ve found to that since my very limited time in VG is FFXIV. It’s also “point based” not time based. I actually got so sucked into the crafting during my 1st month in the game that I forgot to actually play the game.
Ryzom was my favorite. I loved the fact that you didn’t have a bazillion recipes. Instead, you just had a simple recipe that could be customized according to what kind of materials that you used.
For instance, you might have a recipe for leather boots. Did you want dexterity added to that? Well, then, you were going to need [Leather A]. Did you want strength, instead? Then, you needed [Leather B]. But, it also required sinews and bones and stuff, all of which could add different values. And, the quality of the stuff harvested affected how much of a boost you got.
You could really create something customized to what you wanted, in that game.
SWG’s methods still take the cake, IMO. You needed to survey the landscape for materials and picked the area based on the quality of the material you found. You’d throw down a harvester and would have to power it and wait some real time for it to fill. You’d collect the materials and the quality of the material would play a part in the stats of the final object. You crafted pieces. You combined pieces. You could experiment to squeeze out some additional bonuses (or suffer degradation in quality due to failure), and in the end, your name was stamped on the item so people could know you and return to you if you made the best quality stuff.