Quote:Original post by Symphonic
Maybe you get some autistic player who can get them all perfect.
So, you're suggesting that someone should design an MMO, a genre noted for social interaction, such that it can tap into the autistic market? [smile]
On topic: I don't know how much I like minigame ideas. I don't think you should take the player out of the game they're paying for. Or, you could say that they're then paying for the minigame, but why not just play a flash game? I think what I'll be describing could be thought of as a minigame, but you should try to make it feel as integrated as possible. You want to keep people from thinking of it as a minigame.
I think to make it fun, the first thing you need is to make a market for crafted items. I think that this requires both that crafted items be better than what you can get otherwise (or people will just get the stock model) and a sink for those items. I think the sink is the hard part. Nobody wants their well-earned gear to stop working. Most solutions involve some sort of ability to repair the equipment, which negates the effect of the sink. I think you have to make the hard choice to actually have equipment break beyond repair after some "reasonable" amount of time. Otherwise, crafted gear simply won't be relevant and, being irrelevant, won't be fun to create.
As for making the action itself interesting, you need to make it as fun as the other activities in your MMO (I'll assume the most common activity is playing goblin exterminator) and require as much work to perfect as those activities (otherwise it'll just be offloaded onto a mule character and everyone will have their own "pet" crafter). I don't know, maybe things have changed, but when I hear crafting, the process I think of is basically dragging a couple items together, the server performs some sort of skill check, and, if you succeed, you get whatever scripted output comes out.
I say, mix player skill and character skill in a way similar to combat. Have the player actually go through a process to make the item. Let's say the basic process is to smelt the ore, cast the molten metal, and then shape it. Now:
- Character skill should have a significant effect on the distribution of the equipment's attributes. Say, a higher skill will allow the player to create armor with a higher average defense and to a tighter tolerance; maybe increasing skill even causes the distribution to skew more to the right.
- Have the player have to babysit the process. Have each step take time, but have that amount of time vary. Make the player have to watch it to know when to "take it out of the oven". Make this an interesting choice by giving tradeoffs. Maybe smelting longer creates a purer metal, and thus a better end product, but maybe it decreases the yield.
- Give the player ways to enhance the basic process. Maybe there are items that can be thrown in during the basic process that need to be added at just the right time to create various effects (and maybe the same item creates different effects when added at different times). Let the player heat treat the finished product to try to improve its properties. Make it so heating too much or too little, quenching at the wrong time, etc. decrease the properties.
I guess I'm just trying to think of the sorts of things that make the main grind interesting (why is it fun to babysit your character hacking at a goblin?) and don't require a UI separate from the sorts of things you'd already have in place (no separate minigame, the smelting process is as much a minigame as the killing goblin process).