The survey is meant mainly just to give me some insight into the wider gamers population thoughts on crafting, this is a personal project by someone who loves crafting, I do not work for any company, all information is anonymous and the results will be published once I reach 200 respondants.

I'm hoping the results will spark some interesting discussion and provide some food for thought to those all important game developers about what gamers actually want from crafting.

Thoughts and feedback welcome!

Thanks in advance
 

Crafting Survey 

Question: 

On average how much of your game time do you devote to crafting ?

Why does that only go up to 50%?
 

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Originally posted by LynxJSA

 
Question: 
 
On average how much of your game time do you devote to crafting ?
 
Why does that only go up to 50%?
 
 

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I felt that it was unlikely that many players would spend more than 50% of their game time devoted to crafting, if you do then please just use the more than 50% option :)

Nice survey. I can only dream that we can have something close to SWG again. :)

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Originally posted by Zeppelin4

Nice survey. I can only dream that we can have something close to SWG again. :)

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Thanks for the comment and taking the time to take a look :-) Part of my reasoning was because so many games don't put enough effort into this part of the gameplay experience, I love it when it's done well, maybe discussions following the results could spark more investment in this side of gameplay ? one can but dream :)
 

One thing I would like to say about crafting. I do enjoy crafting but it's only part of the whole for me. I love setting up my own business location and getting a reputation for having a well stocked vendor. There is nothing like a customer telling me thanks for your effort and they will be telling their friends about your business. :) The Auction House has ruined this for me. :(

Thanks EvilGeek for this timely thread.  When might you share your spreadsheet with this forum?  I'd love to see what transpires.  I don't how many threads I have answered or posted with crafting as one of the the main "pillars" of mmo gameplay. 

Looking forward to your research findings soon!

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Originally posted by alyndale

Thanks EvilGeek for this timely thread.  When might you share your spreadsheet with this forum?  I'd love to see what transpires.  I don't how many threads I have answered or posted with crafting as one of the the main "pillars" of mmo gameplay. 
Looking forward to your research findings soon!
 

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I hope i'm not being too ambitious for waiting on 200 replies before posting the results but the last few hours have proved very optimistic! I'll post some teasers when I get the first 100 replies in to keep people interested :)

When I played SWG I was a tailor.

I learnt some basic fighting skills so I could life long enough to run away. Apart from that pretty much 100% of my game time was spent crafting, finding resources, arranging my shop, restocking my vendors, or negotiating deals with other players.

Unfortunately no other game has come close in terms of actually providing a role for crafters.

Most games force you to level up your fighting skiills in order to be a crafter. I think that's very shortsighted.

Originally posted by Zeppelin4

One thing I would like to say about crafting. I do enjoy crafting but it's only part of the whole for me. I love setting up my own business location and getting a reputation for having a well stocked vendor. There is nothing like a customer telling me thanks for your effort and they will be telling their friends about your business. :) The Auction House has ruined this for me. :(

Most people approach crafting the same way - they aren't looking for a 'deep crafting experience' rather for the ability to create useful goods and profit or ply a trade with them.

Well done on the survey.

This is how crafting should work in my perfect MMO.

1.  Recipes come from trainers and cost money, no rep, no grinds, just work.

2.  Crafted gear is better than anything else. In fact if there were only crafted gear and some world drops I would be happy.

3.  The main component of the economy would be crafted items and the mats to make them.

4.  There would be no limit to the number of skills one could learn other than time.

Forgive a second post, but this one is after completing the survey.

Firstly, I think your survey is really good.

Still, I think you have partly missed the point on one question, possibly because you've not played SWG or Ryzom.

When it comes to gathering resources I certainly don't want it to be easy, absolutely not, but neither do I necessarily with to fight for them.

Resource gathering can be a real skill; In Ryzom there were lots of different surveying skills, it was so detailed it even separated finding the resource and extracting it into different skill trees. In SWG there was this a similar distinction and the placing of harvesters on top quality nodes was a really important factor to assure good profit.

In honesty I'm more of a gatherer than a crafter and I love games that really make you work (not just in combat) to get prime resources. There could be more ways to distract, slow or weaken mobs that allow you a chance to take resources in dangerous areas without just killing, and more methods to make resources hard to reach.

Consider having resources on top of mountains, buried under shifting sands, floating across lava pools, under the sea, underneath ice or carried on the back of flying insects. Imagine the specific skills you could learn to harvest them.

You could even have cultivation skills were certain resources have to be grown, with a whole new set of skills and requirements.

As for crafting, please don't always put top recipes in the hands of the toughest mobs. It's nonsensical.

I've always been a crafter in games and it seems what I tend to spend all my time doing ever since UO improved their blacksmithing (multiple ores etc) WAAAAAYYYYY back when. It's good to know that crafters are still out there. With the current set of games I was starting to wonder if crafting was about to disappear from games altogether.

With regard to crafting I really think that if you want crafting to matter in a game that you can NOT make a single item better than anything that can be crafted. This means the raid junkies can't get super weapons/armor from raids. What they should do is something like have the raid bosses drop some sort of sword emblem or a gemstone that is supposed to be slotted into a sword when crafting OCCURS. This means that a normal high end sword has the 'option' to have an extra item slotted into it when you make it but it isn't neccessary. The raid boss will drop this extra item that will give the sword a really good bonus. That way the crafter is still involved and raiding still matters as well.

Oh and items have to have durability, or item decay. Item decay should be ridiculously low in that some gamers that only play 4 hours a week should never have replace their weapons but weapons should need to be replaced say every 200 hours of fight time which  should be about ever 5 weeks for the truely hardcore  crazies.

Finally crafters should be able to modify every single stat on a weapon. Albiet each modification should effect other stats as well so it all balances out. Should be able to increase attack speed at the cost of damage etc. Increase armor value at the cost of weight etc. Mats used should matter as well. See Ryzom or SWG for this.

Actually most of this was already implemented in SWG they just had an unfortunate harvesting system that allowed people to screw other people out of resources so that a single resource could be monopolized by 1 person.

Haven't been much of a crafter since SWG, enjoyed being an architect there but with the lackluster crafting in more recent game releases, I've preferred to go the roughneck route and specialise in resource-mongering, especially mining.

Not sure why, but it's always mining. Perhaps my preference for the dwarven race in fantasy settings extends to the love of mining. Meh, who knows.

Kinda feel that the advent of uber items obtainable through drops, PvP rewards, rep and even item-shops are stifling the hell outta crafting in general, as well as separating crafting and combat skills so that everyone can do both. Crafting was better when it produced the best equipment and was only practiced by a handful of dedicated players who were willing to sacrifice other abilities in order to practice their craft.

Adventurers using playermade gear to obtain resources for crafters to make gear; it was a perfect little circle of dependance that led to a strong economy. Shame it fell out of fashion.

Couple of answers that didn't quite fit your options:

What would be your preference for levelling your crafting profession?

Craft leveling should all be through actual crafting imo. I'd want crafting quests to be about gaining recipes, special tools etc.

How dynamic shoul dgathering materials be?

Depends on the craft e.g leatherwork should invove hunting the mobs but other materials would normally be zero combat but preferably more interactive than the respawning resource node method. Of the games I've tried Ryzom implements gathering best with SWG second.

Do you think crafting should be limited to a specific place?

I think this depends on the craft. Fletching might just require carrying a kit but blacksmithing should definitely need a proper forge.

Should recipes demand items crafted by players of other professions?

This is tricky as it can be very frustrating sometimes. My compromise would be that you could buy average quality components from merchants if you were in a hurry but good quality might need a player. It's one of those things that's a good idea in theory but cause a lot of nerd-rage in practise. Unsure.

Should crafting success rate improve with skill?

I'd like thresholds e.g as an apprentice your fail chance on apprentice recipes would reduce with skill but not to zero but then you do a "Journeyman" quest when you hit a certain skill level and become a Journeyman and after completing that quest you no longer fail apprentice recipes. Journeymen ones still do but you can repeat the process at however many other thresholds there are e.g Master, Grandmaster. Grandmaster type items should always have a fail chance imo.

Personally most enjoyable games as far as crafting is concerned?

Not on your survey but felt like answering anway. Ryzom, SWG and EQ1 (despite everything).

You had a question in there:

Do you think crafting items should be limited to a specific place? (For example at a workbench)

It's a simple yes/no and I don't really see it that way.

I'd have no problems with a crafter making mediocre/weaker items "in the field" such as a bow and arrows or the like but I think "quality" items should require a bit more than that -- having someone slam out a spaceship while running through the fields wouldn't work but, again... a crafter making something of lower quality and the like, in the field, would work IMO.

I am extremely pleased that this survey has generated so much interest here, it's nice to see I'm not alone with my love for crafting. I haven't played SWG but going from the results in so far (just a little teaser here ) when asked to scale the quality of experience while crafting in SWG 56% gave it top marks while a further 24% gave it a rating of 4 out of 5. 

I don't want to give public access to the results until wev'e gathered substantial numbers in order to ensure people don't start voting out of some missplaced fanboyism should their favourite game not perform so well in any of the ratings, I am very pleased with the response so far and I'm well over quarter of the way to the magic 200 !

If any of you are members of forums for any of the games listed please feel free to add a link there, I couldn't access places like  the WoW forums as my sub is no longer active.

Again many thanks for all your feedback and it's great reading all your ideas about crafting.

I will change the wording of the question on dynamic gathering events so people who necessarily dont want to fight for the gold but want events or some other challenge  can vote more comfortably. Gathering is the one area of the survey i wish I had taken a little more time over before asking for participants.

Also keep in mind your audience. The only people likely to be reading this survey are crafters at the moment. If you are looking for the general feeling of the MMORPG crowd this isn't it unfortunately.

Good survey EG. I enjoy crafting nearly as much as adventuring.

Im curious to see what others think of how cooperative crafters, adventurers(raiders/groupers), and any additional spheres of gameplay, that may exist, matters to system appeal. I believe the aspect of creating deeper community relations brings out a very dynamic system. Plus, I, like many others, enjoy playing the entire game. I know others do not, which many games provide for already.

Initially EQ2 had a great system of community cooperation. Then sony trashed it along with the deeper dynamic and comprehensiveness. After those changes the system felt very bland. Vanguard hits mutual collaboration really well. It provided a much deeper pride to my crafting. They were more like playing a game vs. a handout.

I would love to see crafted gear take its rightful place in an mmo. More powerful than world(by far), even power as raid dropped, and most powerful would be a combination of item and materials dropped in raid/meaningful pvp(relic events and the like) crafted into uberness.

A game that melds all the spheres with rich questing and objectives would be a welcome addition to many avid mmo crafters. Push button crafting is a snooze fest. I, as a complete gamer am glad that crafted items in weak systems arent worth much. Pure crafters need a multi-scoped structure to feel appreciated, and they deserve a home with patrons!

Originally posted by Miner-2049er

When I played SWG I was a tailor.

I learnt some basic fighting skills so I could life long enough to run away. Apart from that pretty much 100% of my game time was spent crafting, finding resources, arranging my shop, restocking my vendors, or negotiating deals with other players.

Unfortunately no other game has come close in terms of actually providing a role for crafters.

Most games force you to level up your fighting skiills in order to be a crafter. I think that's very shortsighted.

 

 Still miss those day's.
 

Indeed nice topic and I did the survey, but regardless due to experaince with several MMORPG from the past I still feel we are just a minority even back then, let alone where we stand now.

Now some games will have a go at more depth into crafting, but being a gamer for 30+ years I will admit I have gotten spoiled, so for me it's a 50/50 thing on graphics/gameplay, just played soooooo many games just pure for the fun of their gameplay, after a while I atleast want more.

Gimmi a fully polished, graphics fully next.gen, smooth(lag free) atleast for those with the right setup(system) , filled with content of all sorts solo/pve/pvp/raid/dungeons/crafting/housing/vehicles/mounts etc...etc....type of game like pre-cu SWG was and that company will have me for the long run.