Crafting in MMOs is a big part of my enjoyment of an MMORPG, but not necessarily as a pure standalone activity. I believe a good crafting system should require, for any given crafting profession, some items from other professions within the game. Such a system bolsters the in-game economy and also gives a solid reason for alt-play (presuming that one character cannot be all professions at once). I’ll look at this take on crafting and how the games that I have played the most have implemented it.
World of Warcraft
In its earlier incarnations WoW had a pretty good alt-friendly crafting system. I finished up with a stable of characters of various levels, all with a gathering and a crafting profession. I took alchemy, blacksmithing, jewelcrafting and enchanting to the crafting cap. Materials from one profession were important to the progress of others (e.g. blacksmiths make the metal rods that enchanters need as a basic tool of their craft).
In WoW a blacksmith is an enchanter’s Best Friend Forever
Over the years some complexity was stripped out, but the game still has elements of this even today. Crafted armour has generally been of relatively little value in WoW as crafted gear is quickly replaced by quest or dungeon rewards. However flasks, enchants and gems are all considered vital stat enhancements especially for the raiding PVE endgame.
Lord of the Rings Online
LoTRO has an excellent crafting system according to my criteria. The system remains very interwoven even between gathering and crafting. Several of the vocations require input from other vocations in order to level their crafts; e.g. a historian has the weaponsmith craft but not the prospector gathering profession to harvest and smelt ore.
Vocations create interdependence
I do find the in-game auction house very busy in LoTRO and I think the interdependent character of the crafting system helps this. I haven’t played as much LoTRO as I have WoW but the intricate crafting system has encouraged me to create alts to ‘fill in the gaps’ among gathering or crafting professions. I’ve recently been power leveling a cook so I can make my own ‘buff food’ for my stable of characters, I’m also much more involved in the auction house economy than in previous times when I have played and I find this adds an extra dimension to the gathering and crafting sub-games.
Star Wars the Old Republic
I’m still haven’t capped a character or a profession yet. Unlike LoTRO or WoW you can take three professions (1 crafting + 2 gathering) and be self-sufficient for that craft. This weakens the crafting economy since there’s less of a need to trade mats on the Galactic Trade Network (the auction house by another name).
It is fitting for the style of the general game – the high degree of solo-friendly content and the background nature of crafting itself through the companion system. It would perhaps be odd to be dependent on other players or a set of alternate characters just to craft basic items. But given that SWTOR is a game geared towards encouraging players to roll alts (to experience the different class stories) I’d have thought the crafting system should have supported this also?
There are certainly other games that I could talk about regarding this topic. However I do not feel I’ve played EQ2 or Vanguard enough to really experience the crafting or how crafting professions might (or might not) be interdependent. Furthermore in games where crafting is leveled separately I feel interdependence would be a potential negative. Throttling progress in a profession skill is one thing, but blocking actual character advancement due to such a dependency is a step too far.
If you have the chance, the a look at how Vanguard does crafting. Although there are only three different kinds of crafting, it is really unique and great. As about interdependency, there is a bit, but not as much as – say – in lotro.
I did have a go while I was subbed. Perhaps I didn’t get high enough but it didn’t excite me despite the detailed mechanics. My problems were a) rather limited choice of professions and b) it seemed very geared around progression, like you are supposed to do boring work orders to level rather than make nice things to wear or use. I also think it’s probably too grindy for me too. Compared to EQ2 which was mechanically simpler I prefer EQ2 because there’s a lot more variety in crafting and it’s perfectly reasonable to make useful things to use or sell as a way to level up your crafting class. I may well be doing Vanguard a disservice but this is how the game presents crafting to a new player – SoE have a big job to do on presentation of most of the games systems for new players but I digress…
“take a look”, that is.
Yes. Crafting is only as good as the usefulness of what you create. 3 Examples:
TSW’s crafting lacks, because people don’t have a real need for crafted gear or weapons, or for that matter, the money from selling them to vendors.
SWG’s crafting rocked, because raw materials were always needed to refine, refined materials were always needed to make components out of, and quality components were always needed to make items that players used directly. Almost every item was useful in some way, or used by another profession to make something useful.
FFXIV’s crafting WAS interdependent, but was miserable! That’s because it took ages and ages to advance via grind and constant failure. Not only that, your ‘progression’ of crafting level was limited by having to either wait for components from other professions (made difficult because there was no central auction house), or go farm the materials yourself. Interdependence gone bad.
When you have to craft “100 lesser linen sacks of holding” for the express purpose of advancing your crafting level, you’ve failed as a designer, interdependent or not. The solution is make interdependent crafting where the goal is to make something useful/profitable, not to increase a personal stat.
Very true, I enjoyed EQ2 crafting not so much because of interdependence but because I could easily make useful stuff and it was an engaging process to do so. I did pass down gathered mats from my main to lower characters though which sort of links in to my style of having alts with different professions.
Yes I played FFXIV briefly in the hope the crafting game would wow me, but boy was that a tortuous mess!
In a word: yes. The value of exposing the fact of life that ‘people need people’ is one of the best RL lesson takeaways that an MMORPG can teach.
Furthermore, for gameplay reasons, it reinforces the community aspect that should be the forte of this genre.
EQ2′s crafting *used to be* heavily interdependent. And so every crafter had a plethora of crafting alts so that they wouldn’t have to be interdependent on other players. Big outcry, yadda yadda, and now it’s not interdependent at all anymore.