Quote:Original post by Girsanov
What makes trading and crafting fun for you?

Nothing, because that would imply that I am a Diamond, when in truth I am a Spade.

There's a modicum of psychology that goes behind the design of games: finding out what people want (achievement of tangible goals, social atmosphere, one-upping fellow players, exploring what the game has to offer, or whatever), and making it available in such a way that it keeps players hooked. In such games as WoW, it appears as though the game primarily caters to the 'goal achievement'-type and the 'one-upping'-type (though of course other outlets for entertainment exist within the game).

I would highly recommend reading the article I linked above, because it might give you an alternate perspective on the goals of players in games.

Cheers,

Quote:Original post by Girsanov
What makes trading and crafting fun for you?

Nothing in current games... although I didn't play much lately.

Better hype or stats is absolutely something which would make sense for both trading and crafting. Nowadays that real resources are used (typically €$) I believe there could be alot of incentive since players would be producing content after all (virtual ebay? not to this degree).

A really limited example from the past:
About two years ago me and a friend tried to design a spellcraft language which was exactly aimed at providing "real wizards". We really couldn't stand some click-to-kill behaviour. The bottom line of this was that scrolls "on market" would have been sub-optimal and hi-chance to cast.
Writing scrolls would have increased the overall quality (better damage, range etc) but as spell complexity goes high it would have been consistently harder for other players to read the same scroll.
In this sense, it was crafting-oriented but not really market-oriented. The main goal was essentially giving "self-producers" a consistent edge.

These kinds of threads come up a lot (what is it about X that you like) and it strikes me that the replies fall into some common categories:

1. People that dislike X, but also dislike X's game genre in general. Typically there is also a comment that explicitly or implicitly claims that if X were better than they would like the genre (MMORPG's being the most common example). My instinct is that the claim is generally false or at most wishful thinking. Not all people like all types of games. Occasionally they have a valid comment but for the most part they simply are not the target audience.

2. Min-maxers. These people dislike X because they can achieve thier goals faster via Y. There isn't really anything you can do to please such people. If you improve X then Y now becomes "useless". You may even foster resentment because now the time spent on Y was "wasted".

3. The obsessive. These people typically claim to like X in general but dislike aspects of it - usually those that prevent them getting more/better/faster/cheaper. This can probably be viewed much the same as min-max except in this case the goal is actually X instead of X being a stepping stone to something else.

4. Single-issue voters. What these people really like is Y, they feel that X would be much improved if it was more like Y. Anything that is not Y is "boring".

5. The dabblers. This basically corresponds to "explorers" in Bartle's categorization. These people want to do X because it's possible to do X. The fun is in doing something you haven't done before, not the mechanics of doing it.


Enough theory you probably don't care about. I like crafting simply because it gives me something else to do. Sometimes I want to do something other than kill monsters. Occasionally I also get to help myself or somebody else. It's also a diversion while I'm doing other things - e.g. finding a node while grinding. In the above categorization I'm mostly a dabbler with a bit of obsessive thrown in.

In general I don't like trading. I have this somewhat irrational feeling that if I don't make it with my own skills, get it from a quest (without high-level assistance), or loot it from the bloody corpse of the mob I just helped to kill, it just isn't worthwhile. I regularly turn down hand-me-downs from guildees or offers of "help" doing quests (unless the helper is level-appropriate). I will sell things in the AH (to use WoW terminology) but I essentially never buy anything given any other reasonable option and my money goes to waste.

Quote:Original post by Anon Mike
Enough theory you probably don't care about. I like crafting simply because it gives me something else to do. Sometimes I want to do something other than kill monsters.

We could say it's content. It could be exploited to build content... like in 2nd life? I would find this nice. Some people like to have transparent cases: they're mostly useless (the involved LEDs just eat watts for eye-candy) but they go for it anyway.
Minigames could probably be the solution. Have you ever been at a forgery? I did, there's plenty of content here and they have the opportunity to move large amounts of virtual hobbists (have a trip to the forgery mecca JSW)! Next-gen controllers would be lovely!

Quote:Original post by Anon Mike
In general I don't like trading.

Nor do I. In general I have the impression most people would agree with us. It's unfortunate because I believe trading could really improve the quality of a virtual world...

Quote:Original post by Girsanov
What makes trading and crafting fun for you?

Personally, I hate the way trading and crafting is done in a lot of MMORPGs: I farm raw materials for hours, leveling up my harvesting skills. Then, I craft useless items for hours, leveling up my crafting skills. Then I dump everything to NPCs. After weeks or months of doing this, i finally can craft those items which people want. If i choose to just farm loot off mobs, i earn just about as much as a dedicated crafter/trader.

I sort of like how trade is handled in free roam space simulators like X3: everything has to be produced. raw materials are harvested automatically, hands free.

It generates some 'missions' which are often more flexible in their solution than most 'quests'.

Its also 'additional' missions/goals in games which have such limited selection of the typical scripted quests.

It makes the game less one dimensional in giving players more activities to persue (when they feel like it)

Trading is often interacting with real players which often is more complex/interesting than the one dimensional quests.



Unfortunately most games do NOT have a good carfting/trading system and are often as tedious/pointless/limited as (or more than) the rest of the game.

Usually the compexity of the ineteractions between the players and player/environment are too limited and the crafting/trading follows suit.

All round the systems poorly exploit the players use of their imagination.

When you look at it distantly, it seems stupid that is fun. You sit down on your computer, farm FAKE resources, to make in to FAKE items to either keep for your FAKE avatar or sell for FAKE money. However, it is fun. I think it is the sense of reward similar to the feeling you get after doing a "hard days work"