You need to think about it some more. The initial idea behind players creating their own items is great. But once you list everything that can be crafted or modified, then remove everything that requires too much work on your part (as the designer), what remains will be less than impressive.

Switching handles or blades on a sword doesn't sound like very spectacular crafting. It would be just as much fun to change the ammo type in a ranged weapon.

Quote:Original post by Telastyn
The level treadmill to get to the point of building something is not fun.

It can be. It just usually isn't.

Quote:Original post by TheKrust
Yeah, you're right. But unfortunatley, crack doesn't cost (4 million dollars + 3,504,000 man hours + the gross income of bolivia) to make and maintain... which is basicly how much it costs to make an MMO.

400 years?

Quote:Original post by Kest
You need to think about it some more. The initial idea behind players creating their own items is great. But once you list everything that can be crafted or modified, then remove everything that requires too much work on your part (as the designer), what remains will be less than impressive.

Switching handles or blades on a sword doesn't sound like very spectacular crafting. It would be just as much fun to change the ammo type in a ranged weapon.

Quote:Original post by Telastyn
The level treadmill to get to the point of building something is not fun.

It can be. It just usually isn't.

The combinations would be limited yes, but the goal would be to never let people know about ALL the different schematics. because this is all for an MMO, you could regularly (and easily) update the world with more schematics. You could make some really hard to get while having some really basic ones for sale by NPC vendors. This would keep people from getting bored of combinations. And by stopping drops of certain schematics you could extinct certain parts and make the few schematics that do remain very expensive. It would make for a very fun player based economy. I just want to have something skill-based in there. A mini-game or something that makes it extremely hard to make a perfect item but easy to make one people will still buy.

And with all the different items there are to make, with multiple schematics for each part of each weapon you could have all kinds of fun.

This is gonna be somewhat off topic just because the whole "don't make an mmo it's too hard" argument is starting to get on my nerves.

Yes making an mmo is hard, but it's not impossible, and unlike crack, but much like the Darwin awards, one persons sacrifices can bring happiness to many. It also doesn't take massive amounts of resources, it depends largely on what you want to achieve.

Yes sure the large volume of people who come in here say "I want to make an mmo that looks better then WoW, has real time combat in a universe that you can't possibly explore all of, yet is fully modifiable". Sure that's damn near unachievable, but instead of telling them that, why not be slightly more constructive. Something along the lines of "You realise an mmo is hard, and while there certainly is no harm in trying, be prepared to fail at some aspect of it least a few hundred times". Ultimately who cares if they don't succeed, when they fail, on their own, at least they learned something.


That being said, an excellent example of a game that isn't necessarily combat-centric.
RPGWO

And more games achieved by either individuals, or small groups of hobbyists
Eternal Lands
Loradon Online
The Mana World

Quote:Original post by BleedingBlue
Sure that's damn near unachievable, but instead of telling them that, why not be slightly more constructive.

- Because it's misleading.
- Because it filters out a few wannabes.
- Because "You can't do it" is a great motivator for great people. Another filter.
- Because I want more single player games.

Well Ok, heres a big boom for ya. I happen to have a friend in a major game developement position who wants to make an MMORPG, he's not the creative type and he's asked me to go in depth into creating one (but heres the kicker) on paper. If i can come up with a good enough MMORPG on paper he's gonna test the mechanics and work out the kinks and make it into a game. Ya I got lucky and I have a chance to make some money, have some fun, and be able to make a game the way I've always wanted. Now I know the limitations, it's not going to be a bigger world then wow, i have no clue what the graphics will be like, and the combat system will probably end up nothing like what I made up, BUT we're not talking about any of this now are we, we're talking about a crafting system, so STOP talking about how no one will do it because guess what? I got lucky and I actually have a chance too, so none of that matters to me.

I don't want any replies to this, I don't want any apologies, all want is for people to help me think of crafting ideas for an MMO, if you can't contribute then just go to a different thread. I'm sure there are plenty on the topic.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has a pretty cool crafting system. You play a little crafting mini-game to try and make an item. You get new crafting "abilities" as you level up in crafting skills, and you are trying to maximize the crafting points put into the item (to get a higher quality item) while budgeting a limited number of action points available (if you run out before you complete the item, you fail). So, it's sort of a tactical betting game. It can be pretty fun. It also has a neat way of making crafting skill grinding a little more interesting: you can take requisitions from an NPC, which is basically a quest of "craft me 4 adamantine widgets", and then if you do it successfully, you get some gold and sometimes a random surprise item. It's too bad Vanguard was rushed and buggy, because it has some pretty cool mechanics for an MMO; the diplomacy minigame is interesting as well.

EVE Online also has an interesting crafting system. The actual act of crafting itself is pretty boring and standard: raw materials go in, and then you wait around for days until the items are ready. The interesting part is that EVE Online has perhaps the most realistic and fun MMO economy of any game I've seen. Nearly every item is player-made, and the trading system is very advanced and complex, so you can spend your entire time within the game just playing as if you were a manufacturing and trading company. There is also special high-level technology, which is the high-end stuff in the game, and the only way to make that stuff is to have a blueprint, which can only be created by having a character spend a lot of time researching and doing special research quests. These blueprints are highly coveted, since the corporations who have them have a monopoly on the manufacture of those items.

Consider for a moment the difference between crafting in the real medieval setting vs crafting in the real modern/futuristic setting. A blacksmith back in the dark ages had a repetitive and monotonous job pounding away at metal day in and day out, and frankly modern MMO's do a pretty good job of emulating just how miserable a process that actually was. Fact of the matter is, there is only so much you can do with a sword without putting in your own wild and crazy ruleset [such that would provide your sword with magical properties or whatever], in which case you are largely unbound.

Modern engineering processes bring rise to certain interesting things. You have a need for specialists, modularity, and standard interfaces. You also have the concept of the 'black box' sort of model, where x goes in and y comes out, and nobody but the person who made it knows what goes on inside. This sort of black box also gives rise to a crafting culture, where one person/group may very well produce a better model of the same item than the next person/group, since they have figured out how to make that item better. Objects are complicated enough to where they may not be easily just replicated by anybody as is the case in most games.

Consider perhaps a crafting system that is more open ended, that isn't just a straight-forward equation of combining two items into a third item, but instead would present the crafter with a sort of circuit board that the crafter could assemble parts onto into a design that works a certain way within a certain rule set. The product of the process would be a 'schematic master copy', that is both used to see how an object is made, what is needed to make it, and can be used to make a 'schematic', which would include a list of ingredients but not how the master copy was created [a black box. Resources go in, item comes out]. Effectively this would allow for the generation of product brands, would make smart players better at crafting than dumb players [crafting would become an out-of-game skill that players would develop], and a community would grow out of groups of people attempting to develop various schematics that complement each other.

Just an idea...