Posts Tagged ‘craft’
Make building a house fun
Posted by Jeremy S. in Gaming Monday, 12 July 2010 14:33 No Comments
I watched the ArcheAge Housing video on YouTube and was struck with some inspiration for making a small part of a housing feature really fun to participate in…
Guide: Crafting Boss Furniture
Posted by Jeremy S. in Gaming Wednesday, 10 February 2010 11:56 No Comments
Runes of Magic has been adding “Boss Furniture” – cool looking pieces of boss related furniture you can use toward decorating your house. To date, the pieces have been somewhat elusive and even hard to understand. The immediate question is “What exactly is ‘Boss Furniture’”? Think of Boss Furniture as fancy looking furniture that has something to do with one of the many bosses in the game. This small guide should tell you everything you need to know about what they are, and how to get them…
Where Should the Best Loot Come From?
Posted by Jeremy S. in Gaming Sunday, 15 November 2009 19:54 4 Comments
I don’t state this to try to add validity to an argument, just to let you know that I respect where the opinions are coming from. I’d very much like to hear what others have to say.
Some of my friends, I used to play WoW with, I’ve known for a long time and have come to really respect their opinions on all sorts of subjects. They are all very well educated, very well-rounded, and are intuitive as all get out. So when we discussed where the best loot should come from in a game, and they agreed with me, it not only fed my lovely ego(which I do love, no matter how small it is), but I really focused my thought on the subject for a long time.
I’m of the belief that the best armor and weapon loot should come solely from crafting. You can still have good crafting that people will partake in, as I would point to any existing crafting system as flawed yet obviously working. But to have anything less than the best armor or weapons come from anywhere else undermines crafting and takes a way the one purely viable reason to have crafting in the first place. Otherwise you don’t really have crafting, you just have the aucton house where people play online “economists”.
In the strictest sense, I would call all current crafting systems economy systems. They solely feed into the economy. That’s their highest and most valid priority. Sure you are crafting “stuff” but what is the number one reason you are crafting it? In WoW, you may find some alternative uses for crafting early on, but once you pass level thirty, the crafting system takes a nose dive off a thousand foot sheer cliff, and turns more into a money maker where most people stop after refining and don’t actually get to the crafting part. They refine material to sell in the auction house.
There’s a place for this, but there’s also no tangible use for the fully crafted goods. We call these crafting systems?
Are we undermining raids and battlegrounds, if we take away their gear drops? I don’t think so. It’s shifting responsiblities back into their proper places, and improving the game dramatically. Can’t there be other uber drops in raids and battlegrounds? I don’t see why not.
If players and/or developers feel that one area of the game ends up having to take priority over the other as far as where the best loot comes from, then I still see the logical conclusion that it should be crafting. I personally don’t see it undermining raids or “end-game” content because there is plenty to achieve in doing raids, and players will still have a source to obtain the best gear to run more raids and gear up for battlegrounds.
I’m still a bit skeptical about the inner working of Alganon, that is now in beta. But they mention this very aspect which made me smile knowing that others agreed with me. We all love that. But that’s not the only reason for me to push a subject like this. I think it stands on it’s own two feet when it comes to what role different parts of a MMORPG should play.
MMORPG Articles Posted This Week
- My third article, in the crafting series, is up on MMOHub.org.
- I have an article: “Is Horizontal Game Play The Future For MMORPGs?” going up on GameBunny. Look for it soon.
- My informative piece on Runes of Magic’s ‘Aggregator’ is up on MMORPG.com
- I have a few more articles I’ll be finishing up this weekend on these, and other sites.
Enjoy 
Group Crafting or: "Craft Party"
Posted by Jeremy S. in Gaming Friday, 19 June 2009 20:25 No Comments
I’ve been talking a lot about crafting(well, why not? I love it). I wrote a post on making a crafting-centric MMORPG, and even followed it up with another small post to flesh out some ideas a bit more.
This post is more of the same, but concentrating on an idea that came while I was drifting off to dreamland.
I thought of trying to integrate(or replace) current gaming elements with a crafting based element. I started by thinking of how a player party works.
If you could have a special group(or party) recipes that would be complete with level requirements and profession requirements but also require 2-5 players being in a party to craft.
- 2-5 players formed into a party
- each player in party requires a copy of special party recipe, and the required craft skill(s)
Let’s start with a basic 5-man party and run down some ideas I came up with
So you have your party and your all gathered around the correct station and you all have a copy of the recipe and meet the skill level requiremen(s).
- Anyone in the party can start the process by opening up your profession/tradeskill window. Simply clicking on the recipe will run a check to see if you are actually in a party and everyone meets the requirements. Where a new Craft Party window will open for everyone in the party.
I think it’d be neat to have a craft skill point system like in EQ2 or Vanguard, so let’s say that’s already in this imaginary MMORPG.
- With the Craft Party window open you will need to check with all party members to coordinate your efforts. Once everyone is ready, you can hit a button that says “start”, on the window.
- One the process is started a bar appears that slowly fills up depending on the difficulty and/or level of the item being crafted.
- Let’s say, for this example, you are working on a mid-level chest armor, that would result in a blue piece, thus the timer for this would be one minute.
- The timer starts to tick across as the party is now “crafting” the item. As the timer progresses, there will be a percentage change of difficulty which will open up a new smaller window randomly for one or more of the players.
- This new window would represent complications, and will only give you, one of the other players, or even multiple players at the same time, a few seconds to click a button to overcome the complication
- The complication will require a certain amount of extra “craft skill points” from each member that is required to overcome it. If they do not have enough points, then the complication stays and the item will have flaws(it could still be a good item). In addition to extra craft points, some of the complications may require additional numbers of one of the indgredients(so make sure to stock up)
- There will be an opportunity, toward the end of crafting to add any enhancements based off of players professions(if 1 or more players have a profession that allows gem making or alchemy, this part of the progress bar will give you a small window of opportunity to click to get enhancements added)
- Enhancements will be treated the same way, with random complications throughout that need all players attention.
Now this was a basic thought I had. I know it’s not that original or complex, or maybe not even as fun as it could be, but I like the idea that I’m shooting for and just need to flesh it out a bit more.
Also, I know what you’re thinking. Who gets the item? or does each member get the item. Well, I thought about it, and so far my idea for fun, risk, gambling, and so forth was that only 1 item gets made, unless all party members have enough of the required resources, and craft points.
So here is where I’d backtrack and say as soon as the craft party window opens, and before you click start, each player will have a small box to input a “bid” taken from their pool of craft points.
This leaves a fun gambling aspect. You need to guess how much you can bid to win, and still have enough points to actually get through the process and any unforeseen complications.
What about if you only have 2 people, or 3 people in the party, instead of 5?
I was thinking there could be a grade scale to determine the outcome. Say you have 5 grades. So the item will only be grade 2, if 2 people craft, etc….
Sure it would drive people to only want to do it with 5 people, but I don’t think it would stop smaller parties from crafting. You just need to make all items worthwhile.
I mean, as it is, there are better drops than others, but not everyone goes for them? Player psychology, time restraints? I’m not too sure but if craft party recipes are special to begin with, a lower grade one will still be better than a lot of solo crafted ones.