[Crafting] Blacksmiths and Tailors and Bears (Oh My!)
Lucascraft
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Welcome to the MMO Crafting thread. A place to discuss the positives and negatives of crafting across the landscape of the many online games.
Some see crafting as a side hobby or mini-game in MMOs. Other people see it as a way to turn a profit. Others still see it as an artistic expression of your character and outlet to master a trade of olde.
Whether its Blacksmithing
Or Tailoring
Or Gunsmithing
Or Food Crafting
Or Furniture Making
Many trades and lost crafts (and futuristic ones too) are represented in MMOs. Share your thoughts, wishes, stories, and anything else having to do with crafting within MMOs.
Some see crafting as a side hobby or mini-game in MMOs. Other people see it as a way to turn a profit. Others still see it as an artistic expression of your character and outlet to master a trade of olde.
Whether its Blacksmithing
Or Tailoring
Or Gunsmithing
Or Food Crafting
Or Furniture Making
Many trades and lost crafts (and futuristic ones too) are represented in MMOs. Share your thoughts, wishes, stories, and anything else having to do with crafting within MMOs.
Lucascraft on
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Actually crafting still sucks, but back in my UO days. All I did was chop wood with donkeys. I bought me a castle(when you could actually get them) and was a pretty famous woodcutter. I got all sorts of shinies with the money I made off wood cutting. Many memorable moments in pvp areas when someone would come across me and try to take me out. They be all like a simple wood cutter no armor... psh whipped out my shiny green armor, my shiny im gonna hurt you axe, and poof. Got a lot of loot that way too^^
Enchanters make wands. Engineers make machines that spit out bundles of arrows.
That was my favorite crafting game, ever. I love crafting in general, and there hasn't been an MMO yet that I played that I didn't put a lot of time into it.
In SWG I had a Rodian Artisan that was a Weaponsmith and an Droid Maker. I had my own little shop that I sold my wares in. It was so awesome. Its too bad the rest of the game was. . .lacking.
The thing I loved the most about the crafting in SWG is that all of the materials had a quality score, and better materials made better product. It was both fun and challenging to track down the best mats and make a really good item for someone. The really good craftsmen were known by reputation and had a constant supply of work orders through in-game mail and tells. People would register waypoints to the good shops, and they would come again and again. Being able to build up a regular clientele was so rewarding.
I really want to see another game that borrows heavily from the SWG model of crafting. Only with better gameplay for the rest of the game. The downfall of SWG is that the core experience was grinding creature missions for money. There wasn't really a lot to do. If they would have included some story missions and actual game content in with their sandbox, it would have been the best game ever.
I often think of SWG as being the game with the highest potential, and the poorest execution. If they would have done something with the incredible world they build, that game would be a serious competitor for WoW.
My favorite MMO crafting has to be... what was it called again? Oh yeah, Saga of Ryzom.
You had blueprints for, say, medium boots. This blueprint had a bunch of slots - sole, inlay, whatever the rest were called.
Each slot fits a different type of material. Depending on the materials used, you'd get different stats on the final result. And the materials themselves came in different qualities too -- so the same blueprint can be used to churn out a ton of low quality boots, or you can go on an epic quest to gather up the very best materials and produce Epic Boots of Asskicking +5.
Unfortunately it was ruined by low drop rates, low number of gathering nodes, and long respawns/distance between spawns of needed mobs, all of which combined to make it far too easy (and lucrative) for powerful crafters on a server to monopolize resources and strangle the crafting progression of other players.
Crafting in WoW feels shallow and boring by comparison, though it is undeniably more rewarding for the effort it takes, and is more accessible at all levels.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
When all your gold blows up in your face because the high end piece of gear you were having made exploded, you become a little pissy with FFXI's crafting system.
"Congratulation, you spent 3 hours camping this fucking dragon and YOU BLEW UP THE LOOT."
Oh god, I remember that famous screenshot when the Subligar Desynth thing was popular and Shining Cloth was still ridiculously expensive. Dude blew up 64 Million gil in under 2 minutes. That was a lot of money.
Sometimes I Stream Games: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/italax-plays-video-games
I like in WoW, how you have mats, you don't spend hours farming mats for one item, that's just a skill up item, and there's a good chance you can use the stuff you make.
I have enough boring tedius shit in life, don't need it in my games too.
We must be playing an entirely different WoW altogether because not only does it take hours of farming to get the most basic reagents for most of the good stuff I can craft with tailoring, there's also a few 4 day cooldowns involved. So, in addition to hours of farming, I also get the distinct pleasure of waiting for those 4 day cooldowns to slowly tick away because more often that not I need multiples of those items to craft just one thing.
While I don't enjoy the actual aspect of crafting, I have an innate desire to hunt down the best ingredients and be a material supplier for those that do craft.
Making money hand over fist with my creature handler when it came to very high quality meats was quite a good time back in the day. I always wanted to get into prospecting and setting up a harvester farm too, but never had the extra points to fit it in my build.
Primal Mooncloth, why do you hurt me with your 4 day cooldown even after the expansion made you cheap like a slut?
I meant primarily, for the long haul in the crafting you don't spend hours farming for mats for 1 item, on a worthless shitty, no-use skill up item. Yes you spend hours farming mats for the epics, and even the blues. but the green sword of fucksticking? Some ore, and that's it. Not like in EQ where you had to go kill a ton of guys to drop the metal, then the guys to drop the dye, then go find some mushrooms growing in the forest of doom where some pissed off unicorn would kill you on sight.. then go all the way back to town to make your 1 sword, and have it break instead of be made. Then you get to go back and do it all again.
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM
What I have seen from games since then...WoW, EQ2, LotRO, and W(wait...is there even crafting in WAR I can't remember)...has been an extremely limited tiered system that's completely boring. Yeah when you start playing the game those level 1-20 items are great, but as the game wears on the entire crafting system turns into a 'get to end game' grind worse than normal leveling. Anyone who takes time to make basic materials, farm the resources, and play the market should be able to profit from the start of the game.
*sigh* I always wanted to be a big time crafter but never had the patience for it.
Every time someone mentions FFXI crafting, I still must point out.
Boom, there goes your Tiamat loot.
Oops, I broke the Vrtra drops.
Goodbye Shining Cloth!
Losing mats like that is utter BULLSHIT. Couple it with the fact all those mobs aren't instanced and you get a situation where you can break the only useful drop the entire server gets from a mob for a week.
Sometimes I Stream Games: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/italax-plays-video-games
I should note that if you haven't drastically lowered the chance to lose items on a synth via stuff in your mog house, items, synthesis support, and plain old "having your craft skill capped", you usually don't have any business trying to craft anything with those high-end mob parts in FFXI anyway. Yeah, it's a stupid antiquated mechanic, but it can still be mitigated.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
All games where you have a crafting skill that you need to level up will result in raw materials costing more than finished.
Also when crafting you have a CHANCE to get a .1-.5 skill up with 100 being the max skill and the material requirements for some levels are stupidly expensive or rare like the ones you mentioned. Oh also you need sub-crafting skills in order to level them fully.
Mog House stuff only either lowers your chance to lose materials when you break shit (The elemental mogenhancement) or raises you skill by a single point. No matter what you did. No to mention, most of the stuff was high level. Dalmatica, was something you skilled up to 100 with, meaning you could get at most a +6 skill barrier over it.
Not forgetting stuff with sub-skills either, where that was factored into your chance to break an item. You could only get one synth support type too, so you were stuck with one.
Levelling to 100 in any of them was painful as hell and generally wasn't worth it. I know with tailoring, 100 didn't put you into the next tier for a useful HQ chance on an item if you have the +6 skill from items and enhancement, so no one usually went out of their way.
Sometimes I Stream Games: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/italax-plays-video-games
I just started cultivating and apothecary, I am having alot of fun, but damn if half my bag space is pots and mats and the other half is seeds and spores. Once I can get more bags, the option to set items to go to a certain bag will make a world of a difference.
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM
Alot and for a while. I played mostly Tale2 and at the beginning of Tale3, worked my ass off during the first 24 hours then just worked at a leisurely pace for the next month till I faded off into obscurity. The original new player guide for Tale3 was my doing. It is now so modified I doubt 50% of it is still my work, but I loved helping out the community.
This one, plus if anyone is interested in trying it, I think 90% of it still counts for Tale4.
Steam, PSN, XBL, Xfire and everything else JamesDM
Arrows, Bows, Box Containers, Crossbows, Staves, Wood Shields, Wooden Components
Just a few ideas right there!
And my poor Death Knight that couldn't afford an icon.
Somehow, thats the allure of final fantasy 11. I know he hits me, but really, I deserved it.
That's not quite true. In order for the finished product to be worth more than the raw materials, levelling the crafting profession must be undesirable and difficult to level up.
Ironically, it's completely impossible for a crafting profession to both be FUN and PROFITABLE. If it was fun, people would do it at a loss. If it was profitable, there needs to be some barrier to entry to keep people from doing it, and the only barrier to entry that exists in games is non-funness. Or random chance, I guess. You could just, say, make it so that people randomly fail to level their profession and permanently become unable to practice it / die.
I'm all for more puzzle elements in MMOs anyway, and not the kind of puzzles you can look up on fucking allakhazam.
This man speaks the truth. It also caused players to work together and have a true economy.
Oh, you're a rifleman? You're gonna need buffs, armor, and weapons.
The Armor and Weapons come from weaponsmiths and armorsmiths. They gotta get their metal, rather its from their own harvestors, or buying it from a guy that does nothing but harvest/survey. You're also gonna need buffs from the doc. The Doc and the armorsmith, and sometimes the weaponsmith, would also need animal supplies. So Rangers would get the joy of going out and hunting down 2bajillion avian meat on lok when it spawned really well.
So much fun.
Now crafting is retarded. And Jedi an Mandalorians are everywhere. Earthrise is looking good though.