Yesterday I posted an article up about how MMOs seem to not always designed with one of the guiding principles of game design always in mind: find the fun. This sparked some conversation – largely over Twitter – about this topic, largely because I used crafting as my main example. While it is far from the only example I could have used, crafting has always been something I generally avoided in MMOs, simply because I never found it to be very entertaining. This has nothing to do with me being a gun-ho action lover, but everything to do with crafting being implemented as a very boring system. I’ve always tried to give crafting a shot when I play games, but I’m rarely impressed.
Still, there are a few games I’ve played that have had some good ideas that, if taken further, and if combined with some other systems I’ve seen, could actually come out with something interesting. I’d like to explore some of these things in respect to some of the challenges MMOs have to overcome to get an interesting crafting system.
The Market
To put it bluntly, the economies in most MMOs are awful. That’s fine though, as they’re rarely games focused on economies, simply using trade and money as a means to an end, and not actually a source of enjoyment. This is true, except for one major exception: EVE Online.
EVE is a weird game. The gameplay systems within it are far from exciting when looked at on their own, but there is an amazing metagame instead. Part of that metagame that addresses the problem of economics in MMOs: the player controlled market. A number of games have implemented player-run markets before, but EVE Online has it down to a science – literally, they employ an economist. The economy works for a few reasons (and this is a hugely watered down answer): players have a constant need to consume goods, play is focused around the accumulation of wealth instead of character advancement, just about every playstyle revolves around the market and everything is interconnected. Miners gather resources, others research and build objects, traders ferry goods around the galaxy to be sold, and everyone – more so the combatants – buy goods. It runs very similar to how an actual economy works.
Of course actually building things is boring.
Crafting Gameplay
Most games feature pretty simple crafting systems. You look at a recipe, get the resources required, put them together, hit some button, and wind up with an item. There isn’t much to it. There’s very little thought, very little strategy, and very little of interest in the activity itself. A few games have tried to take crafting beyond this, but none of them have ever succeeded, in my opinion.
EverQuest 2 got it the closest in my opinion. They basically presented crafting in a similar way to combat. As you crafted, the item had a bar – well a few bars, but that isn’t really important – that represented how much progress you’ve made. It had another bar that represented the quality of the item. You had to finish the item before it ran out of quality – kinda like getting your opponents HP to 0 before yours does. You also had a number of abilities to help you out with this, including things that would increase progress (damage spells?) and others that would increase quality (heals?). Complications could arise, which required you to throw in certain abilities to stop them from taking effect and causing something bad to happen.
It was a pretty amazing system and for a long time, I actually liked crafting! … Then I realized spamming various abilities and ignoring complications was just as effective as actually paying attention and trying. Incidentally, combat was the same way, so perhaps there was a reason for that. It broke the system and the fun for me, regardless. Still, I think with some alternations, this system has a lot of potential.
Vanguard tried doing some alterations to it, including making it turn-based, which meant that you couldn’t really just spam anything. It was a good effort, but it left players with a system that was very slow going, very, very repetitive, and somewhat akin to the eight circle of Hell.
Variation in Goods
In EverQuest 2, as your quality degraded, you would eventually be lowered to a lesser grade product. If you turned out a Grade A product, it would generally be better than a Grade B, C, or D one. It would usually provide better stats, work more effectively, etc… This was nice, but when it came to variation in goods, Star Wars Galaxies was king – at least in the pre-NGE era, I can’t speak for it now.
In Galaxies, the effectiveness of a product could range widely. The same good from one person could be barely usable, while made from a master craftsman could be absolutely amazing. Variations in goods were not divided into grades like EverQuest 2, but rather ranged fluidly based on a number of factors. The skill of the crafter helped, of course, but so did the type of resource he used, as you did not have to use very specific resources to make items. You could use any type of bone, for example, but certain bones were better at making certain products. Each resource had its own properties, and having a firm understating of those properties could enable you to make far better items. Through experimentation processes, you could find just the right mix of materials to make the ultimate product. Heck, you could even name it with your own brand too.
Certain crafters gained a reputation for being particularly good at their trade. I remember wandering across the Dune Sea of Tatooine once to track down the quaint home of a master armorsmith once – now that felt pretty epic. It was the level of complexity and the variation in goods that allowed that to happen.
Plus, Galaxies had harvesters and factories, so you didn’t have to mindlessly grind out items. This is good, given the actual crafting process was dull as any other game.
Getting the Materials
…I haven’t found a game with a real good way of getting resources and making that somehow fun. I hear Free Realms has mini games. I haven’t played it yet, so I haven’t a clue.
Shy of that though, if you could somehow combine the aspects of all of these different games, you might well wind up with a pretty epic crafting and trade system, unlike any a gamer has seen before. Of course, if you did so, you likely wouldn’t have much time left over to create a combat system or content. Then again, you could make a pretty amazing crafting-only game, which … actually might work.
