Comments on: Crafting: My Argument Against Synchronicity

By: Rennec

Rennec — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:01:51 +0000

SWG did have a good system for crafting pre NGE. As most of you probably know it was based on resource quality (which spawned randomly) and for the truly special stuff looted subcomponents.
What SOE did wrong in relation to the SWG crafting system was perhaps too many randomly spawning resources (I was still waiting for the right Inert Gass for my Combat Medic components when the CURB hit) and of course the few wastly superior random itemdrops (Anyone remember the 1000 per tick mindfire light lightning cannon?)

I can agree with the sentiment that Blackguard expresses, that adventurers will be miffed if their loot from a dragon is a sword part as opposed to a sword. But I think that they might learn to live with it. Any sword that had been sat (and quite possible excremented) upon by a dragon would be pretty worse for wear anyways. To get the heartstone of a dragon for use in crafting the magical sword would be just as exhillarating and free from the prospect of dragon poop.
And, even more importantly, a system which allows you to drop a component as opposed to an item allows for more diversity and more abundancy in the drops. (much like the token system adopted by Blizzard for end game tier items) and I think even hard core adventurers will agree that the crafting components for three swords is a better drop than the one sword in itself. After that, it’s only a matter of waiting for some really good mithril to spawn

By: Pride returns to EQ2 crafting

Pride returns to EQ2 crafting — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 14:57:58 +0000

[...] exceptions. This is not the thoughts of SOE, but an interesting read non the less. Crafting: My Argument Against Synchronicity Your browser does not support iframes. Iframes are a requirement to see a user’s [...]

By: Wondrous Inventions » On Crafting, Linkage, and Gold Selling

Wondrous Inventions » On Crafting, Linkage, and Gold Selling — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 00:22:43 +0000

[...] Anyway… crafting! Aggro Me, Moorgard, and Blackguard (the members of the Round Table) kicked off the tradeskill discussion with Craft This, Crafting in MMOs (Or, “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”), and The Role of Crafting in Massively Multiplayer Games respectively. With Synchronicity, MadScientist negates the Round Table’s postulate that mob loot must be made better than crafted items. Wondrous Inventions (”me”) then chimes by posting Crafting in Today’s MMOs just before Blackguard returns to further debate Synchronicity. To finish, West Karana dumps The Crafty Adventurer on the rest of us, who by that time I am sure are just about sick of reading about tradeskills. [...]

By: IGDA SAN DIEGO » Crafting in MMOs

IGDA SAN DIEGO » Crafting in MMOs — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 22:45:35 +0000

[...] Crafting: My Argument Against Synchronicity (Ryan Shwayder) [...]

By: Broken Toys » Blog Archive » And Their Screams Are The Music Singing Me To Sleep On Rainy Nights

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 19:17:26 +0000

[...] But I have comments. Oh yes. Also, in response to some other posts, my Vision Statement on how to make player crafting in a virtual world not totally suck! [...]

By: Madscientist.net

Madscientist.net — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 02:40:49 +0000

Where’s Dan Akroyd When You Need Him?…

?(Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series. Before reading it you should at least read the Role of Crafting in Massive Multiplayer Games, Synchronicity, and Crafting: My Argument Against Synchronicity. Optionally you might want to read Som…

By: Spyder

Spyder — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:24:18 +0000

There are several assumptions behind all of these comments: that the game structure remains “play, build character, level up, raid”, as though the only end-game has to be raid-centric. I would argue for a complete revamp of the entire philosophy surrounding MMORPGs, beginning with placing raiding simply as another aspect of the game instead of its ‘conclusion’ (so to speak). There shouldn’t be an end-game, per se, nor should it basically devolve to “go raid again, rinse, repeat, etc.” Nor should crafting automatically be shoe-horned into a “always lesser than what can be found” niche, either.
Here’s a few ideas: a system that allows me to build a sword. What do I need? I need the basic template of a sword (not template for Iron Sword, template for sword — the basic fundamental pattern itself). I need to decide what materials I, the crafter, want to use — I may choose to use a lower-quality material, say tin, while someone else may go straight to iron. Whichever. We also need to build not just the blade, but the hilt. (I don’t want to get into the “sixty-three subcombines to make a shirt” silliness) — for the basic sword template, it’s blade plus hilt. Don’t have the system provides recipes for completed items — have them provide recipes for basic templates. Let the players mix/match materials to create the items — make the systems support that sort of thing. So if I choose to make a tin sword, but put a nice shiny, elaborately-worked hilt on it, I may raise its market-price because it’s a great “showpiece”, but in the field it will work less capably than that adamantine blade over there. Doesn’t even need a lot of choices of materials — just a few. The CHOICE, the mixing and matching, will create the potentials. Perhaps I want to add a bit of “glowing material” (to use an EQ2 term that cries out for more ingenuity in its phrasing, as in, “ooh, I built this sword with iron and some glowing material!” sounds far worse than “I forged this sword of iron, and mixed in the ash from a melted Dragon’s scale”) and go for enchantments — have a basic database of potential enchantments plus how they mix/match. The crafter chooses what he builds in this system — and each item comes out more unique than in the current boring, build-the-same-thing-as-Fred-over-three systems that dominate MMORPGs. Obviously working with Adamantine would be vastly more difficult and require far more skill than working Tin, for instance. And working in enchantments would add to the complexity and hence difficulty to build.
The basic thrust is: make systems that give the crafters the choices in what they build — instead of just “find recipe, gather materials, bang it out”, and you’re “iron sword” will look/feel just like every other iron sword out there. In EQ2, you get an extra +1 to the items stat-bonuses if you get better qualities — bleh. It’s better than nothing, and certainly better than WoW… but it’s far short of where it could be. Once again, the choices aren’t the crafters — they just follow blindly along the very stratified, top-down, hand-me-ther-recipes, build-repeat-yawn Crafting philosophies that exist.

My reply may not be the most cohesive thought structure, but I hope it conveys the basic idea: build crafting systems that reject the old “everyone builds the same things” arguments that totally dominate MMORPGs today and create flexible systems that put the choice of what to build in the player’s hands. And add color, for God’s sake — make a copper sword look different than Iron, and so forth. Make an enchantment either add a faint glow, or a deepening of the coloration, or… something. I hate the EQ2 “imbued” system, which lets even items for low-level characters carry “enchantments” — except they look exactly like every other item that’s the same basic name (iron chainmail shirt, imbued iron chainmail shirt, yup, can’t tell ‘em apart).

By: Cal

Cal — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:47:50 +0000

While reading the entire series of five posts, the one thing that’s always come to mind is Hattori Hanzo. (Again, assumption of Adventure and Item-centric.)

I think your point on apprenticeship would work well in allowing crafters to say, “Yeah, I made that, now go destory people with it.” Sure, the apprentice helped do the run of the mill things I could have done myself (with some higher effort), but it is still MY sword.

On the vein of swords (because I’m sure every crafter the specializes in Swords wants to craft that masterpiece Hanzo sword), they are things that take time. I agree that there do need to be some barriers so the world is not flooded with “One-of-a-kind Masterpiece Sword of Ass-Kickery”. Masterpieces are the items that a crafter takes the most pride in, especially if they were difficult (not tedious mind you) to make. One thing I was thinking of was simulating the process of working on a sword for X number of hours a day.

You’d have a couple of subcomponents that could be stock (what you’d use on your “mass production” weapons) or maybe just “fancy” (stock hilt + shiny gem?) but then when you get to the sword, you’d have to do “work” on the blade over a week or two. Having a slightly involved crafting process (maybe requiring an apprentice? or being very difficult without one) lasting for 3-5minutes a day. The master crafter would have this blade take 15 sessions to complete and could do one session a day. Then you’d place the recipes for all “Masterpiece Works” on a cooldown of a week or so. That way, it would take 3 weeks for a master crafter to move onto another masterpiece project without it a) not letting them be able to make their run-of-the-mill items, b) flooding the market with “one-of-a-kind” swords.

With any tradesman, it’s the craftsmanship involved that’s the important part, in fact, with those Masterpiece weapons, I’d probably only make them for friends and guildmates considering the amount of “time” it took to create, but I’d be rather proud that they were using them.

As it stands now, in all my MMOs I’ve played recently, I have a master craftsman, and none of them can really do both things. My Maker in Matrix can only make the same items as everyone else. My Master Domestic in SWG is hardly useful for anything (despite the awesome customization allowed by Tailoring, and Chef’s experimental crafting), and my Master Elemental Leatherworker in WoW can hardly make anything that’s either useful or worth the effort to make. I take pride in the fact that I have them, and jump at the chance to fufil an order for a guildmate, but they’re no where close to actually being “fun”.

If you can allow a craftsman to create masterpieces every once in a while, and still letting them manufacture items for everyday monster slaying both to keep out of the poor house and stave off bordem, you have a win-win(-win).

By: Cyanbane

Cyanbane — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:44:08 +0000

Your “printing money” doesn’t fly with me because the world admin always have control over crafting and how many crafted items are produced with restrictions on resource allocation. Too many people flooding the market with Uber Rare items that are lowering the value of raided items? Then just create a deficit in resources used to create that item. Make it special when someone DOES harvest/attain that item. This also brings the harvester/attain-er players into the fold.

By: lisasdarren

lisasdarren — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:49:54 +0000

You know, from my comments on Moorgard’s blog, that I agree that the optimal idea is to make crafted loot identical to adventured loot. However I disagree with the idea, as you do, of group crafting. Crafting dependancy is ok, so long as it is minor, the weaponsmith needs to bye his metal from a smelter for example.

My solution is different, rather than having to have lots of people and artificial blocks. Have one person, lots of time and legitimate blocks. How long would it take a master craftsman to produce a masterpiece of a sword? For example the old multi-folded samuri swords, days even weeks. So why can crafters make the best items ina few minutes in most games?

So to make this sword we have our crafter, he has to spend time preparing the metal for the blade; working the blade, multiple times; shaping and sharpening the blade; engraving the magical runes on the blade; creating the crossguard; making the hilt; decorating the hilt; assembling the pieces; casting the magic rituals to embed the item with magical powers. Lots of things to do.

Now no craftsman can work 24/7 on making their wonderful sword so they need to take breaks, maintain equipment etc. So you build in an endurance system where the crafter gets tired can can no longer craft so needs to rest, though not for too long as downtime is often complained about so say 20% of the time.

Then we can add in forge maintenance, you need to keep the fire buring hot, let it get too cool and you won’t be able to craft until it is back up to temperature. Need to clean the place so that things left lying about don’t and up catching fire from a random spark. Tools can break, so you might need to go replace one, and if in the middle of something have to redo some of it.

How about procedures that take long inactive times, such as allowing a blade to cool naturally, without being quenched, in order for it to absorb magic dust you just sprinkled on it. Can’t do any more work on the item for 8 real hours.

Sure during the downtime the crafter could work on something else, assuming they don’t have essential maintenance of their workshop and have the endurance they need, but the items still enter the world at a slower rate.

So it might take 5 hours of game time to make a great item, 20 hours to make a near ultimate item, and for the items dropped by time limited, contested raid mobs 20 hours plus a special item that can only be obtained (and NOT through adventuring) once in a specific time period, or could drain the creator for so long that they can’t create any more of these best items for a while.