When i look at a crafting system, i look at a few things:

1. Ability to make rare items that not everyone can make

2. Ability to customize the heck out of items you make 

3. Flexibility in approach to the crafting process ( i.e stats )

Vangaurd has all 3 of those and is for me the 2nd best crafting system I have ever seen. SWG I would say was the best however it was done a bit differently ( not so much about stats and crafting gear ) but more about resource aquisition.. which is a neat problem in itself when you are dealing with a real living breathing world-system.

Any crafting system taken seriously needs to look/feel like adventuring, something everyone can enter, but certainly not everyone can be "the best at".

All of the other systems ( wow, rift, etc etc etc . . .  ) are really just tacked on and have no real depth/complexity to them at all. I think you can look at it like this:

Can people just craft with said crafting system in said MMO and have that be their gameplay ? If yes, they you may have something..

Otherwise its some half-baked shallow system to say hey sure, we have crafting <check off that box>

Originally posted by Quirhid

Vanguard's crafting system scores high on the annoying and tedium scale. I don't know how crafting works in GW2 but it would be hard to do it worse. I like the sort of crafting that is automatic. Put materials in, get stuff out. Maybe wait a little, but certainly not griding some god-awful minigame over and over.

Horrible... just horrible.

I actually really liked that mini game.  I did get a bit burnt out but I wanted to be able to craft boats as quickly as possible.  You had to do different puzzles to create different items, and you had to build all of the components to make an item.  I think the minigame and component crafting in Vanguard was great but the game did force you to play that mini game a lot to raise crafting level.  Ideally, a game would have a similar minigame but not require crafting level.  You would get the fun of the puzzle without having to do it literally 1000's of times.

Best game for crafters is still EVE though, since it is the only game where people actually use crafted equipment.  In EVE people need to buy crafted stuff constantly since they lose it often.  In most games once you get some awesome drop you never ever need a piece of crafted gear to go into that slot, ever. 

LOL

This thread is funny.

Vanguard crafting is pretty engaged. You have to solve a minigame. You have to keep track of utilities, action points, etc. You have to get good crafting gear, quest for certain recipes, other recipes cost tons of money, again other recipes need special crafting drops, and so on.

And Vanguard offers a lot of options about what you can craft.

I would say Vanguard ranks pretty high, except of course if you want a trivial crafting system, as apparently many people in this thread do. Then obviously theres a ton of games with more simple crafting.

This says it all really..

http://wiki.silkyvenom.com/index.php/Crafting

Star Wars Galaxies is the pinnacle of crafting with EVE Online and Everquest 2 following up right behind it.

Like many have posted, I found Vanguard to be annoyingly tedious. The mini game seemed less concerned with your stats and more concerned with random, terrible happenings.

Originally posted by Velric

Star Wars Galaxies is the pinnacle of crafting with EVE Online and Everquest 2 following up right behind it.

Like many have posted, I found Vanguard to be annoyingly tedious. The mini game seemed less concerned with your stats and more concerned with random, terrible happenings.

Then you didn't really play it through. Those that played, know crafting is all about gear and stats.

The EQ2's crafting system is very simplistic at its core and the "mini game" after the first levels is just button mashing.Vanguard crafting system is top notch IMO but it needs more crafting quests and quest lines especially in the mid to max lvl.

Istaria has one of the best crafting system but it is a bit grindy too.

Originally posted by AG-Vuk

Originally posted by Velric

Star Wars Galaxies is the pinnacle of crafting with EVE Online and Everquest 2 following up right behind it.

Like many have posted, I found Vanguard to be annoyingly tedious. The mini game seemed less concerned with your stats and more concerned with random, terrible happenings.

Then you didn't really play it through. Those that played, know crafting is all about gear and stats.

Vanguard crafting goes through several stages:

1. Isle of Dawn 1-10: You basically go through the questline and thats it. Nothing else to crafting at this stage. Especially you cant create anything worthwhile.

2. Banisher New Targonor / Ahgram / Tawar Galan 11-25: I usually try to strech this stage to 25 or higher, by doing some WOs in between, so I have less of a boring grind after. With level 25 you start to be kind of useful - T2 stuff is easy to do, as an Artificer you can manage Repair Stones, as an Leatherworker T2 saddlebags ...

3. Masterwork Sigils: Once you can manage Tier 3+ batches to all grade A, the big grind to get your sigils starts. Also use the bag of wonder daily (it sometimes drops sigils), and check the broker for recipes (they drop from diplomacy). This way getting enough sigils should be done pretty soon. My last level 50 crafter has handed in about 40 sigils for ancient plat because I didnt needed them for anything else.

4. Society Quests 25/28/35: Quests are getting thin now. More and more one enters the big grind for sigils. Thanks to the Banisher Questline, one has great equipment for that level, at least compared to the status before. The society quests add great jewelry and an kickass apron.

5. The big big grind ca 30 - 50: Several big quests in between, like Magi Hold level 47 (but you need civic buffs or good gear for the last stage), but basically you have to find a routine to not lose motivation. A good idea is for example: every day you play, get to a crafting outpost, craft 3-9 batches (30-90min) to all grade A (the highest you can manage), and then do adventuring after.

6. Double XP weekends: There is definitely nothing better to level than crafting on double XP weekends. Safe your double xp potions for these occasions. You can literally fly through the levels this way. Oh, and you will still get more than enough sigils even if you would exclusively only level at these weekends - so dont worry.

7. Pantheon of the Ancients 50-55: Here you get your final gear, and the big recipes.

It ranks tedious, grindy, and bot ridden.  The concept of chopping trees for materials, collecting things to make houses, crafting things to make boats are GREAT concepts.  But the skilling part is boring, tedious, and very grindy.  It was so bad that everywhere I turned, there were automated bots skilling up.  This is what I would call it another great ideas, but bad execution.  I'd much rather skill up by making items like crafting in other games, versus doing work orders.

Hmm.

I havent seen bots since years.

And every time I saw one, I reported them.

I would rank it as one of the better more involved ones.  A bit too grindy for my taste, which is odd because I play Istaria as well (boy that game is a grind).  Howeve rwhat made it grindy was not just the click fest but that I wasn't really interested in the things I could craft.

Crafting a house would be nice, but I feel too limited in my choices so didnt' care about the house.  Never did make a boat though, that might be good.

Anyway, definately one of the better ones. 

edit - when they go f2p if they ever had brick and board building like in eq2 or just expans the selection like in Istaria, I am so all over this thing.  Flight, great housing, bards, nice graphics, ships.... yep it could work well.  Oh and change the way elves run, sheesh, running so stiff like and slighly sashaying (sp) egads, can't stand the way my dark elf runs.