So, recently I have been pondering a few of my ideas for character classes that would provide a unique gaming experience, and one of my resulting characters was "The Crafter".

I, for one, love the idea of having an artisan as a playable class. The way Gravity inc. executed the blacksmith in Ragnarok Online made it a very unique experience.

What are your thoughts on the implementation of a simplified 3d CAD -esque program into a game, to allow for crafters to have unlimitied possibilities creation wise? (The rules of physics could be bent to the setting of the world I.E. magics and what not could be power sources) 

I feel the same way about it as I do using something like Fight Maker 2 to make your combat arsenal in a competitive setting; I don't think it works.

Namely because of half-assed creators.

Ryzom may have had something going for it, but without having ever played it, I can't speak on why that may have been the case... but as an example from the Fight Maker point; I once fought my buddy in that game with my fighter who would cheep him with an overpowered "spasm" of a move that allowed no balance whatsoever. I apply the same school of thought to crafting where aspects like reach, size, weight and others can be altered to abuse every point. I am sure there is a way to impose the balancing limitations in combat to the creation scheme, but without it doing it's job right, I can see long spear-type things being mandatory to hit people from faaaar away, as well as being wide enough to block out the sun.

The same fears for abusing balance and pacing applies to custom player-made content as well, but it's possible to monitor with the very creation system employed as long as you cover things like mob placement to loot tables as an untouchable function to the systems.

I like it more when everyone is able to craft rather then having a specific class for it.  Usually you'll have very few people playing the class seriously and the majority will have a crafter as an alt.  Plus a lot of games now don't have worthwhile crafting, which makes it even worse when it is its own class, kinda like RF Online.

Originally posted by loirnoir

So, recently I have been pondering a few of my ideas for character classes that would provide a unique gaming experience, and one of my resulting characters was "The Crafter".

I, for one, love the idea of having an artisan as a playable class. The way Gravity inc. executed the blacksmith in Ragnarok Online made it a very unique experience.

 

What are your thoughts on the implementation of a simplified 3d CAD -esque program into a game, to allow for crafters to have unlimitied possibilities creation wise? (The rules of physics could be bent to the setting of the world I.E. magics and what not could be power sources) 

FFXIV is going to have a crafter class,so you might want to see how they implement it,there is no better creative developer than Square Enix,so i am sure they will make it interesting.

Most all the games i have ever played[hundreds],show little depth into any class,so hoping for anything magical may be only a dream.FFXI was the first game to really take class design to another level ,done so by the sub-class system.They utilized many new/unique ideas to their class design,so i would look to them before hoping any other developer has any creativity.

Originally posted by Wizardry

Originally posted by loirnoir

So, recently I have been pondering a few of my ideas for character classes that would provide a unique gaming experience, and one of my resulting characters was "The Crafter".

I, for one, love the idea of having an artisan as a playable class. The way Gravity inc. executed the blacksmith in Ragnarok Online made it a very unique experience.

 

What are your thoughts on the implementation of a simplified 3d CAD -esque program into a game, to allow for crafters to have unlimitied possibilities creation wise? (The rules of physics could be bent to the setting of the world I.E. magics and what not could be power sources) 

FFXIV is going to have a crafter class,so you might want to see how they implement it,there is no better creative developer than Square Enix,so i am sure they will make it interesting.

Most all the games i have ever played[hundreds],show little depth into any class,so hoping for anything magical may be only a dream.FFXI was the first game to really take class design to another level ,done so by the sub-class system.They utilized many new/unique ideas to their class design,so i would look to them before hoping any other developer has any creativity.

If you got the time/patience, check out this thread of mine;

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/257121/Classes-based-on-what-you-do.html

It's a rundown of the class system to an RPer MMO I have been working on for quite some time and would like your opinion on if the system is "deep enough / too much".