There is no doubt that MMORPGs today are getting more and more technically impressive. With every new MMORPG release developers are raising the bar higher in terms of graphics, sound and game play, but unfortunately developers aren’t putting much attention to crafting skills. An MMORPG without player interaction isn’t an MMORPG at all, and what better way to make players interact other than encouraging them to trade amongst each other. Crafting skills can add a lot of depth to a game, and quite frankly, an MMORPG without a crafting system by today’s standards is pretty lacking. My chief complaint about crafting skills is that developers don’t put much effort into them and usually end up putting something together that feels cheap and unimpressive.
Games like MapleStory and Fly For Fun are fine examples of how crafting should not be done. MapleStory has absolutely no player interaction in its crafting system. In order to craft weapons / armor players need to talk to an NPC and bring that NPC items gathered from monsters. Players don’t actually have to craft the items themselves, they simply have to bring a bunch of items to an NPC and the NPC crafts the item for you. Sure this… ‘works’ to some degree, but it doesn’t encourage player interaction and since you have to bring a bunch of items to an NPC it’s the same as completing quests for items, and because of that the game has an extremely limited number of craftable items. The system is so lousy that players rarely even participate in it.
The game that I’m most impressed with in terms of crafting skills is Luminary: Rise of the Goonzu. The game has a really simple crafting system. Collect items and use certain components to make armor and weapons. The beauty of Luminary is the significance of crafting skills in the game. In order to buy weapons / armor you HAVE to buy it from another player through the game’s auction house or directly from a crafter, as NPCs do not sell weapons or armor. This sort of system makes item crafters extremely valuable and actually useful in the game.
MMOs today need to work a bit harder on developing solid crafting skills. Too many MMO games simply have uninspiring crafting skills.
thats true, but i keep saying the games that big hardcore players has the best crafting and thats runescape and for the main one world of warcraft . they thought about it,they actually put a plan to make the weapon from raw material to the actual item, but the problem is that the majority of the thing you make you can buy from the NPCs but they need to step it up and have user created items that can be original , for example swords that nobody ever seen. to put to low standards like “the spore creature creator” but for items. now that would cool and player can make they own blacksmith logo trademark.
now i want to see people make gay looking swords to armor that are the gucci of the game world. NOW THATS COOL. MANNNNNN!!
now we put our head down for fury will be cancel while trying to become free to play but failed..
Luminary: Rise of the Goonzu does do a decent job with the player economy except for the fact that the game is so dang boring and simple that when I’ve tried it I couldn’t really enjoy that. IMHO The Saga of Ryzom did a fairly good job with the player economy, if I remember right basic items where sold by NPCs but they also carried player made items that tended to be of a higher quality. Gathering the items you needed came either from killing creatures or from harvesting and each thing of equipment needed 4 separate categories of items to make it, which can be mixed/matched for different effects on the item’s stats. It’s too bad the game went out of business two times, though it’s making another come back.
I think the “OG” Starwars Galixes had a awsome idea with there crafting system you gathered items and stuck them together in diffrent combos and ended up with unique items
Wow crafting sucks for the most part unless you have a high lv toon because you cant get better gear from crafting untill after you need it
I just want to see a game where you Mine/Hunt/Scavenge/Harvest your matts and based on skill make a varitty of thins from the same stuff dependt on quanity/quality of the matts as your skill gets higher your able ta get better Quality matts from the same source i could go on for days lol
Give us Good Games damn it lol
Umm I liked Rohans, I mean yea you had to go to an NPC but the gathering and farming items was fun. especially in that game. I loved the fighting in it so much that I looked passed the grinding. The only issue i have here is that they make you waist millions of your cash on failures. THATS BULL SHITE YNK.
The best crafting system by far and i mean it outwieghs anything ever listed is in Wurmonline. Mine the raw materials, smelt them in a forge, create items (skill based) there is farming, cooking harvesting , tree chopping , carpentry metalsmithing, and soooo much more.
Yeah and there are usually about 70-100 players online in Wurm. It is advertised as free, then you get capped on all your skills at 20 (which is only 1/5 of the game max). That is to push you to buy a “premium” account for about $15.50 for 2 months game time, IF you don’t want to have any in-game cash (might I add is a setup also). If you want to have any in-game money to buy stuff off the merchants, start a town or homestead, or pay the upkeep for your town or homestead…then guess what…you guessed it… buy silver from the cash shop because you sure aren’t gonna get any off the 3 traders in the game and merchants don’t have any. So you can either buy 1 month game time with 5 silver for $15.50 (10 euros) or you can buy 10 silver for the same price with no game time. So let’s see we have roughly $31.00 for 1 month play time with a total 15 silvers of in-game money or 2 months play time with 10 silvers for the same price. Last I checked…that’s called a rip-off. And on top of that the servers are crappy, the devs constantly changing the decay rates, no new stuff added into the game in a long time (i’m sorry but an icon that shows what an item needs next to improve it or a note that tells you why the decay rate was changed is not a new feature or new content). I played Wurm for a long time, and as a paying member at that, when all is said and done it is a nice idea with alot of good stuff started, but it is FAR FAR FAR from done. And the last time I checked, most of the devs are gone except 3 or 4 (and tbh the project is more like a little pet project than an actual viable retail product). It’s great if you want to play to skill level 20, forget about PVP (which requires premiuim also and there’s about 25 people on the pvp server), don’t mind pitiful decay rates, or having to put up with a population made up of people that mooch and freeload all while acting like 2 year olds.
Id have to say the best crafting system that is also backed up by an economy is EvE-Online. I have to say its more of a production system then crafting, but the best part is that the economy is player run so it is extremely dynamic. ebb and flow of material prices effect final product prices, and the universe is HUGE!! there’s only one server with at least 15k players online at one time, no instancing. EvE is the best mmo ever.
EVE is one of a kind but has its caveat especially white some player having access to T2 blueprint while others don’t (T2 blueprint are not given out anymore but were not removed from play).