I have alot of experience crafting in all MMOs, and its something I find rather enjoyable. I suppose you could call me a "crafter", although I imagine myself as more of an alt-oholic. Because usually when I play MMOs, I have to do all the things, crafting, adventuring, raiding, exporing, ect. 

The way I see this working, based on what little information is out there at the time, is that dungeoneers and raiders will be looting the rare materials from the big baddies, but they are going to need the crafters to turn that dragon bone/blood into something useful for them. If thats the case, I think its brilliant. High level raiders are still happy, they get to find the rare loot, and Im sure it will be expensive even if they dont want the items made or already have the best stuff. Crafters are still happy because although they didnt get the material themselves, they are still making the best in slot items from those materials. Everyone wins.

Recently EQ2 took a step in this direction, and it works wonderfully. Sadly the game has 8 years of history of crafters not getting the best items, so the transition is messy, but crafters are able to make items from raid drops that are better than other looted raid items. 

I also agree with others here. Coming from a crafter, you definately need progression. If a crafter is going to made Dragon Bone Armor, he better be a Master in his craft. whether that means hes spent a hundred hours at a forge, or made a thousand lesser quality items, the exact path doesnt matter, but he better have put in the effort. 

Maybe going off topic some, but both Vanguard and EQ2 are great examples of making crafting a viable playstyle. They both have crafting specific quests, with crafter gear to wear, and thier own leveling paths. I think this is a step in the right direction. I like GW2 crafting, but I hate that it earns you regular xp. The XP you get from crafting should only count towards crafting, not your adventure levels. Making a hundred swords doesnt make you any better at wielding them in battle.

So I agree, the key component to making crafting in TESO worthwhile is twofold. Unfortunately you got both (or all three wrong). First, crafting has to be stable as its own playstyle. It should have progression, but it needs to be seperate from adventuring progression. And second, it needs the ability to make best in slot items, although those materials come from the games hardest bosses and raids. Thats what makes successful crafting. 

Originally posted by koboldfodder

Just awful.  Probably written by a person who never seriously played a crafter in any game.

The entire point of Themepark MMOs is that you do something and get a reward.  Do a quest, get a reward.  Run an instance, get a reward.  In themepark MMOs, there is no point in doing any instance if the loot is not desirable.  Be it a raid, or a full group instance, the content is totally abandoned.

Which is why these games generally turn into barter fests, where instead of getting a reward you get faction coins or marks or whatever....so the content becomes doable but the end rewards are the same. 

The end result is the same.  Item loot is always going to be better than crafted loot.  That is the whole point of a themepark MMO.

 

What developers do not understand, and what they have NEVER understood, is that there are players (and quite a lot of them) who only want to play crafters.  For them, crafting IS the fun part.  They are making items people desire.

 

The only themepark MMO that has ever gotten that part right was Vanguard.  Every other themepark crafting system is a total and utter wast of time and money to develop.  Not because it is not used, but because it is not needed.

 

Crafters could not care less about removing crafting levels or the tedium involved.  They are CRAFTERS....the work involved in making items is what appeals to them.

 

Make the players figure out the recipe for themselves....what exactly does that do?  Just find a website with the recipe.  The developers simply do not understand that the majority of people playing as crafters already HAVE their crafting website opened.  EQ Traders anyone?

 

If you want to be serious about crafting and make it a core part of the game, just copy and paste one of the successful crafting systems.  SWG had a great one for a sandbox type of game, Vanguard has a great one for a themepark.  Eve has another one, Horizons also had a great system.

 

Don't pretend you want to put in the effort for a great system and then just half ass it like most of the games.  All you are doing is insulting the players of the game.

 

Just come out and say the following.  "Crafting in TESO is going to be like WOW" because we all know that is how it will probably turn out.

And what you dont understand is that many players find crafting pointless and takes away from the overall feel of immersion in actually running content.  if you can craft what ever you want then theres no point in running dungeons or other content.

I'm trying to appreciate the article for what it is but there's a couple things that seem to never stick out to you when talking about ESO. Like -  They're saying it's *NOT* a Themepark and... there's no dragons.

Really makes it hard to consider your other thoughts/theory craft on particular aspects of the game when you can't seem to comprehend information we have actually been given.

I do hope they make the creation of items dependent on items crafted by other crafting professions, at the very least on the higher mastery levels.

People have forgotten what an MMORPG is. They've become this thing in which the inclusion of other people is a nuisance. Other than going out and killing mobs to get phat loot to show off by standing around in a social hub.

MMORPGs were/are supposed to be a virtual "reality" to escape to. A gateway to some fantastical fantasy world where you can live out magical impossibilities - with other people.

I could go on and on. Basically: Yes, please, ZoS. Give me back my MM in my ORPG.

some like me play for crafting not for combat. 

my tagline in the games i pllay is. " I am a maker, not a breaker!!!  I build the Toys others use to go < BOOM >.  "   its people like me who grease the gears to make the world go round. 

i like the crafting system in skyrim where i can decompile enchantments from items found in game to learn thier traits so i can make more and better items.  i believe the best, most powerfull items should be made bye players like myself not bye drops from mobs. the best way to balance it is to make it so you have to sacrafice dropped weapons with enchants to get components to make better enchanted items. we wopuld be buying up all the low end enchanted items from players to decompile into component aspects that can then be combined in greater concentration in better items or combined with aspects of other types so make items with abilaties not otherwise found. 

I GAVE UP ON WOW BECAUSE DROPS WERE ALLWAYS BETTER THAN ANYTHING THAT COULD BE CRAFTED.  and eve online because i cold craft everything in the game up to motherships and space stations but there was not enough demand for items i made without  puting myself in a place where ther backstabing and pvp made crafting impossible. 

i enjoy the veriety of items i can craft in skyrim but still think it coule be made better for a multiplayer environment. 

enchanted items should be made up of varios components that give it its abilaties, rare metals, gems, arcane components and such. thies items would come from dungeons and mobs ingame. they would then be decompiled into component parts and recombined in higher concentration for higher quality items and in new combinations to make items not otherwise available.  items should come from many crafting aspects like they did in " Horizons ' Legends of istaria ". metals, woods, cloth-leather, magic components, mana, etc.  the battle banners in horizons was a good example. it took components from 5 different crafting schools to make them. i was the only one on my server for several weeks who was actualy making them. 

curently i am playing minecraft with a FTB minecrack server and the thaumcraft process is very interesting because its complex and takes components from many items to make the arcane items. 

Originally posted by koboldfodder

Just awful.  Probably written by a person who never seriously played a crafter in any game.

The entire point of Themepark MMOs is that you do something and get a reward.  Do a quest, get a reward.  Run an instance, get a reward.  In themepark MMOs, there is no point in doing any instance if the loot is not desirable.  Be it a raid, or a full group instance, the content is totally abandoned.

Which is why these games generally turn into barter fests, where instead of getting a reward you get faction coins or marks or whatever....so the content becomes doable but the end rewards are the same. 

The end result is the same.  Item loot is always going to be better than crafted loot.  That is the whole point of a themepark MMO.

 

What developers do not understand, and what they have NEVER understood, is that there are players (and quite a lot of them) who only want to play crafters.  For them, crafting IS the fun part.  They are making items people desire.

 

The only themepark MMO that has ever gotten that part right was Vanguard.  Every other themepark crafting system is a total and utter wast of time and money to develop.  Not because it is not used, but because it is not needed.

 

Crafters could not care less about removing crafting levels or the tedium involved.  They are CRAFTERS....the work involved in making items is what appeals to them.

 

Make the players figure out the recipe for themselves....what exactly does that do?  Just find a website with the recipe.  The developers simply do not understand that the majority of people playing as crafters already HAVE their crafting website opened.  EQ Traders anyone?

 

If you want to be serious about crafting and make it a core part of the game, just copy and paste one of the successful crafting systems.  SWG had a great one for a sandbox type of game, Vanguard has a great one for a themepark.  Eve has another one, Horizons also had a great system.

 

Don't pretend you want to put in the effort for a great system and then just half ass it like most of the games.  All you are doing is insulting the players of the game.

 

Just come out and say the following.  "Crafting in TESO is going to be like WOW" because we all know that is how it will probably turn out.

The problem with this is you're one of maybe a few dozen players who like to have a second job when they log in. The vast majority of us don't, which is why they keep re-vamping crafting across MMOs. At least they're talking about making crafted items equal to looted items. I would have figured you would be sick of being totally inconsequential to the game play experience due to your items always being inferior to what raids supply by now.

Originally posted by aslan132

The way I see this working, based on what little information is out there at the time, is that dungeoneers and raiders will be looting the rare materials from the big baddies, but they are going to need the crafters to turn that dragon bone/blood into something useful for them. If thats the case, I think its brilliant. High level raiders are still happy, they get to find the rare loot, and Im sure it will be expensive even if they dont want the items made or already have the best stuff. Crafters are still happy because although they didnt get the material themselves, they are still making the best in slot items from those materials. Everyone wins.

 

I agree.

I liked the item decay idea and I will expand on that.

First of all, lets not call it crafting, lets call it profession. Why? I'd like for that profession not only to craft items but repair the damaged ones too.

And repairs shouldn't cost gold, but actual crafting mats proportional to the durability lost (that should require for droped gear to have a crafting equivalent mats list).

With that in mind durability should drop very slow and should require lots of use and lots of deaths to actually break the gear.

Also I would like to see stat loss on badly damaged gear, lets say 10% of stats on 50% durability and 50% stats on 10% durability or something like that.

EDIT: also higher quility gear should have higher durability

Just my opinion and some food for thought :)

Originally posted by NC-John
Item decay or it's a worthless endeavor. All items even raid loot.

I like this. It will keep supply and demand at a healthy rate.

Why not have something like this?

*You craft Iron Armguards*

*player Joe (lvl 5) buys "Iron Armguards".

*Joe hits lvl 10!*

Now its time for some new armor. Between lvls 5-10 he can take his Iron armor to a smith and either have it repaired/upgraded/enchanted (two or three tiers per 5 lvls) to scale to his/her level. If there are no smiths available online you can still do this but more bonus if done by a player.

Something along these lines..the point im trying to make is please make crafters serve a purpose and not just make stuff and put on auction house.

I so disagree with you on the best game for crafting.

Star Wars Galaxy had the best I have ever played. For  it was the only one I have ever come across where being a crafter was its own class and where you had to put in true effort in what you made. It wasn't just combine this and that and you had a product. It also depended on the quality of the material as to the quality of the end product. Thought and effort, not just simply slapping 3 of 4 peices of material together, something any casual player could do.

SWG's way of setting up crafting made it that your casual fighter could not just sit down for a few moments and produce the same level of product someone (like me) might spend hours working on.

Originally posted by FromHell
i wish it will be a little bit like SWG which had the best crafting/trading imho

 

I so agree. SWG had the best of all time.

Originally posted by Rukushin

Ok, I may be hopelessly dreaming here but bare with me and please i'd like to hear some constructive critisism on this outside the box idea:

Turn crafting into a sort of mini-game. I take blacksmithing as my example. Tired boring old way is you open up your blacksmithing window and choose the armor or weapon you wish to make in which case your character standing at the forge will simply hammer indescriminately on an anvil and WAHLA! Like magic, the space of nothingness you were hammering becomes your item in your bag slot. BLEH been done before, BUTTTTTT

New Idea:

I liked how in skyrim the camera would pan out and show your character actually hammering an item or stoking the fire. Now lets take that alittle further and why not actually have the player enter a first person view mini-game state where you  actually put the piece of armor or weapon in the fire and wait for  the color to change within about 7 seconds from a red to orange until eventually a white hot spot forms on the piece in one of about 12 different pre-coded areas of the armor or weapon. Then you actually pull the armor out and try to hammer as dead-on to that spot as possible as you compress the metal as much as possible. Now this process is rinse and repeated about 5 times at 7 seconds roughly to have the color change take place and aobut another 5 seconds of hammering. Then dip in cold water and WAHLA! much better immersion and crafting actually can turn out to be quite fun. All the while the computer keeps track of how dead-on your aim was in hammering the white spots and averages out the fives times then depending on the accuracy their could be a slight difference in stats between the same crafted piece by two seperate different crafters. 

Just something that popped in my head after reading all the posts above ^_^

 

I like this idea, but, this would make crafting and item take longer. But I like the immersion idea this shows. 

Bill,I was with you until the end of your article.The part about one person not being able to craft different kinds of items.I think a person should be able to craft anything.....just as one can in the Elder Scrolls games.The arguments I would make for MY...not your position:

-ESOL has positioned itself as a game of freedom.....wear anything...any weapon .....mele...magic any character can do it all. Your position on crafting is exactly the opposite of ESOL's freedom to be anything position

-Limiting what a character can craft means one thing......multiple characters to accomplish  the same crafting goals.Your position just makes it more of a pita to craft how I want to craft.

-Elder Scrolls games allowed your character to craft and enchant .....ANYTHING.Changing this practice would be contrary to the current Elder Scrolls lore

Originally posted by TaraSojourn

Originally posted by Rukushin

Ok, I may be hopelessly dreaming here but bare with me and please i'd like to hear some constructive critisism on this outside the box idea:

Turn crafting into a sort of mini-game. I take blacksmithing as my example. Tired boring old way is you open up your blacksmithing window and choose the armor or weapon you wish to make in which case your character standing at the forge will simply hammer indescriminately on an anvil and WAHLA! Like magic, the space of nothingness you were hammering becomes your item in your bag slot. BLEH been done before, BUTTTTTT

New Idea:

I liked how in skyrim the camera would pan out and show your character actually hammering an item or stoking the fire. Now lets take that alittle further and why not actually have the player enter a first person view mini-game state where you  actually put the piece of armor or weapon in the fire and wait for  the color to change within about 7 seconds from a red to orange until eventually a white hot spot forms on the piece in one of about 12 different pre-coded areas of the armor or weapon. Then you actually pull the armor out and try to hammer as dead-on to that spot as possible as you compress the metal as much as possible. Now this process is rinse and repeated about 5 times at 7 seconds roughly to have the color change take place and aobut another 5 seconds of hammering. Then dip in cold water and WAHLA! much better immersion and crafting actually can turn out to be quite fun. All the while the computer keeps track of how dead-on your aim was in hammering the white spots and averages out the fives times then depending on the accuracy their could be a slight difference in stats between the same crafted piece by two seperate different crafters. 

Just something that popped in my head after reading all the posts above ^_^

 

I like this idea, but, this would make crafting and item take longer. But I like the immersion idea this shows. 

Yes, it would be longer but isnt an MMO's purpose to last as long as possible as a persistent world environment that is forever changing? I think themepark MMOs have become too quick in gratifying the masses perhaps listening to the community alittle too much and instead need to dial things back a bit. 

Really good items should take a few days worth of gathering the mats to make and it should take time even when crafting the mat as long as there is a sense of immersion while waiting. 

I just hope for alot of intricacy and complexity in the crafting system of TESO to hold players in for months to years not a WoW level where I can go from 1-600 within a couple days because there is no depth. 

1. Crafted gear on same level and a few pieces, like very few, that if the highest skill is mastered can turn out to be better most definitely than dungeon gear but even a slight bit better than even raid gear.

2. Randomness to stats or some type of upgrade process to customize gear and really add a reason to go to a certain famous crafter in the game. Seeing <Made by [insert name here]> is simply not good enough anymore and screams 2003 game. Not 2013-2014. 

3. Goes hand in hand with #2, but customization in the look of gear. The more detailed and intricate the customization goes the better, hands down. I mean better in the sense of gameplay for crafting not that the item is better.

I have read all the above comments and the article and hope they do make crafting more enjoyable (such as in Skyrim other than the mindless crafting of iron daggers hehe) because I do like the way it works by breaking down enchanted weapons to learn the enchantment to add to an uninchanted one to make it better, and making you have to learn how to modify enchanted items to be able to upgrade it once it has been enchanted because sometimes I really like how the gear I have looks (such as in SWTOR) and would rather upgrade it rather than replace it with something I dont like.

And as far as item degradation goes, I could go either way on it I think its a good idea due to taking too many arrows to the knee (sorry I had to lol) should weaken your armor and lower its defence rating untill it "breaks" and is no longer wearable (like how it worked in diablo II when it got weakend to the point you still had it on but it was pritty much just a silk bath robe) but the repair system in that game could either be avoided via a single rune being inserted into the item making it indstructable (a trick I used for etheral gear that couldent be repaired anyhow) OR an INSANE ammount to repair the durabilty based on what the gears specs were (like a high tier rune word piece of armor could run you up to nine million gold to repair if it were reduced to zero so I kinda like the idea of having to go get pieces of iron, steel, and so on to repair it is a good idea.  I also think that adding a bit of a penalty to it such as if you take it below say fiftey percent of its durabilty you PERMINITLY loose stats on the gear such as damage or defence which would keep the crafters functionality around on things because people like me who do not allways pay attention to those things would need a replacement piece crafted.

I also like the idea of adjustible recipies for the items to adjust its stats or apperance like say I wanted a glass sword, but I dont like the way the hilt looks on it, instead of using the typical metal used in the forge for it, use iron or steel that way the apperance would change.

I have crafted a bit in SWTOR and like and hate things about it.

First, what I really like is that EVERY item you craft has your name on it so everyone knows you made it unless it gets traded a ton without getting equiped the inscription wears (which is cool by the way).

However anything that gets crafted is BOUND to whoever equips it which although keeps the crafter crafting, it kinda kills some of the global market because I cant sell my blaster that got crafted to someone who could really use it because its bound to me so they have to go scrounge up either the credits or the items needed to craft it.

Now  I dont craft, because I hate it on the MMO I play the most (ffxi) BUT there are a couple of good things about its crafting system but I will list the bad things about it as well.  

Bad things first, its a horrible evil mind numbing grind to progress any crafting skill levels (I've been playing for 10 years and I think my highest crafting skill is 3 >.<) and it can be EXTREAMLY costly to craft things even if you dont break the craft (which happens alot).

Second is the way the crafting works, take two to six items, press ok, and wait five-ish seconds to hear one of two sounds, one is a competion sound, the other sounds like breaking a piece of glass letting you know you failed..... and when you fail, you can loose all or none of the items used in the craft.  

Third and last thing I can think of off the top of my head, is that you can only max out one (if I remember correctly) crafting skill and the others are capped out at a lower level (like 100 for max without gear buffs the rest would max out at 60)

Now for some nice side of things, most of the potions created still get used to this day even with how cheap a couple of jobs abilities can be.  so there is still some profit now that there are not a lot of newer players coming in and using that low level gear that you can HQ nightey nine percent of the time.  Although ammo crafting for yourselfe is pritty much a must if you use a job that is primaraly a ranged class such as "ranger" or  "corsair" because buying ammo can get EXTREAMLY expencive when you are unleashing ten or more arrows or bullets per fight.

Second would be what they TRIED to do with "Synergy" which was to bring up to four people into one craft (I think its four >.<) to make some pritty steller gear, however it fails in retrospect that you can actually  "quest" better gears by doing "trials" for serton weapons and shields, or by "questing" spacific gear (such as the homom set where you have to collect so many of a set of spacific items to have a NPC craft the gear for you, which you can then upgrade with the same proces with different items on some gear) Now they made synergy more interactive by making the "furnace" that you use either cool or heat up too quickly, or you could add different elemental items to adjust how the items extra effects would turn out, such as adding say wind element to a gsword to make it deal wind damage on top of its other stats.

Third again deals with the synergy aspect of things.  Say you are like me and have almost no crafting skill at all but you really really really want to own that prismatic greatsword because it looks cool while you are sitting idle in town trying to sell off the crud you got on your last "dungen crawl".  YOU can have the original item that it is crafted from that happens to be rare/exclusive (in ffxi that pritty much means you cant trade it, sell it, or ship it off to a mule to get it out of your inventory/storage) so all though you cant give it to the people crafting the item for you, YOU get to be a part of the craft by adding the item to the mix and helping them maintain the proper furnace reactions.

I love crafting unless the game forces you to do undesired chores for mats like raiding, because the cost to buy from other players is so outrageous (sometimes, justifiably so). Or worse, you need to utilize 20 daily cooldowns, or 600 of a rare/expensive mat. Will raw mats cost or sell for more than the crafted item since everyone makes that BIS (best in slot) sword?

Will everyone sell the same item because anything less is a joke, and look the same? Can 2 crafted swords from 1 recipe be customized for stats, appearance, and capabilities?

eg.: Titanium Sword A has strength, can reduce a mob's armor, and has a wide blade. Titanium Sword B has agility, can shoot fireballs, and has a narrow blade.

How will a mega server impact gathering mats? How can I maintain a unique appearance and playstyle when everyone equips the same BIS items at endgame? Please find a better solution than using Guild Wars 1's dye in conjunction with WoW's transmog. With sarcasm, I love my 90 WoW toons looking like lv 40 because 90 armor is uglier.

I liked Vanguard's system, as it seems a number of people here did. But I still think it missed the mark in terms of what people who actually like creating things would like to see in a crafting system.

What I would like to see, instead of a reactive minigame, is something more artistic and creative, more in the spirit of the way TES has historically engaged the community's creativity:

- You decide what the itemlooks like. You choose a 'base' material (cloth, fur, leather, chain, glass, steel, whatever) for each of several different 'parts' of your armor (e.g. for a chest piece: front/back panels, side panels, epaulets, sleeves). These selections open up an array of shape, texture, and detail options for each armor part from the existing art files. Certain textures and details may require additional material like gems. Colors other than the material's base color require dyes.

- The weight of your combined material selection determines the weight of the armor (light/medium/heavy) for skill purposes, as well as its protective characteristics (which will also vary with the final required level of the armor). A similar system is in place for weapons.

- You then determine the stats and the enchants on the armor by adding small quantities of certain materials. Most small non-food items in the game, including herbs, gems, bones, precious metals, etc., can be added to the armor to produce a stat effect; soulstones and spells (or enchanted scrolls created by other casters) can be added to produce an enchantment. These effects sometimes interact with each other as ingredients do in TES alchemy. Materials obtained from higher-level zones and more difficult enemies produce stronger stats, and higher-level spells produce stronger enchants, but these stronger pieces require more skill to craft.

- The ingredients used to craft the item determine its required level. The itemization budget is transparent; you can see what effect a combination of ingredients would have on the item's required level before you craft it.

- In the final crafting process, there's a small-to-moderate degree of RNG impact on the quality of the final item; you might end up with a 'common', 'rare', or 'epic' version. Your skill, compared to the skill required to craft the item, determines your chances of getting each level of quality (for instance, a maxed-out crafter would be almost guaranteed to craft an 'epic' level 10 item).

- Certain very rare ingredients obtained from raids or difficult PvP objectives can be used to guarantee epic quality; certain rare ingredients obtained only from group content/ordinary PvP objectives can be used to guarantee rare quality.

- It's possible for a crafter to modify a dropped item, keeping its stats and enchants but replacing its base material to change the look and weight; this process is exempt from RNG. It's also possible to upgrade existing items (increasing the required level) by adding additional stats/enchants, although this is subject to RNG.

I think a system like this would make a place for crafters as artists and artisans in the world. It would also make the crafting process much more interesting, and it would take enough time and resource investment to create a useful item (which would hopefully be the best way to level) that it wouldn't be necessary to require people to craft dozens of near-useless items at each level to skill up. This would also help resolve the glut of worthless crafted items that tends to plague auction houses.

What makes a good PvE player good? Skill. What makes a good PvP player good? Skill. What makes a good crafter good in popular MMO's nowadays? Nothing.

All you need is level up your profession, get recipes and then... grind/buy mats to craft!  No recipes? Fine I can browse the internet for them and I will have them... just in an excel file. Different crafting components have different effects/stats which are not in the tooltip? Who cares? I will browse the internet and create an excel file with all the info I need.

In every MMO I played crafting didn't require any skill.

If you would require effort and skill to make a perfect item you might make them better than loot gear. You might name the best crafter if it will require player skill. Without it? Well you can simple make any cauldron type system we see in every MMO. Doesn't depend if you would have recipes/discovery mode/no tooltips on mats. Just click to craft :)

So mini-games or some skill based system or nothing :D