MMORPG crafting

[Worthington]

I thought the crafting system in Vanguard was pretty well done (well as well done as anything in that game). Crafting was profitable, and something you could specialize in as it was not tied to your "adventuring" level. Different crafters really did become well known on each server. Me and another weaponsmith ruled our server, despite our relatively high prices. Partially because we didn't screw up requests but also because we never tried to rob anyone and at the same time made things people wanted. Lots of experimention (read gold layout) went into figuring exactly how things tied in together.

Also the crafting mechanics were nice. It wasn't "gather 2 of these and 5 these, hit crafting button and profit". Crafting was it's own little mini-game.. try not to screw up since your final product would suffer. All of which led to exactly what Skacer metioned. You NEVER tried a new recipe with real mats. You always just did the generic, regular recipe before tying to make something you could market (using rare mats, enhancement crystals, ect).

This was all in the first 3 months of the game. Not sure what it's like now.

 

[BoberFett]

SWG was the game for crafters until they turned it into SpaceWOW. I was one of the top crafters on Bria server for a while, for several months before the space expansion was added. I actually had far more fun crafting than fighting in that game, but considering how terrible combat was that's not saying much.

 

[Drift3r]

WoW's crafting system sucks and it sucks hard and it doesn't help that even green mob drops are going for ridiculous prices these days in WoW. I believe most will agree here with this assessment of how much WoW's crafting system sucks. I never had experience with SWG crafting system but I did play Saga of Ryzom which had a awesome crafting system. Everything was player made. All mats could be gain from killing mobs or harvesting resource nodes in the game world. The quality of items depended on the quality of material used in SoR. I play EVE and it too also has a great crafting system which is pushed along because of it's great PvP atmosphere. It seems to me that the best crafting systems were and still are a product of skill based MMO's rather then level based MMO's

OU
EVE
SWG
Saga of Ryzom

The common trend with these games are that they are all skill based and all have crafting systems which matter and allow the players to supply each other with gear.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: darkeneddays

Originally posted by: HeroOfPellinor

Originally posted by: darkeneddays

Originally posted by: Dman877
When was UO released and how long did it last with a good player base? My first mmo was DAoC, before that, I played CS

UO started in 97 I believe. It had a good player base until probably 2000/2001. UO:R hurt the game instead of help it and more MMOs began to emerge around that time.

Actually UO:R helped the game in the short run. No more fear of PKs brought new players and old players back and people loved being able to kill monsters without fear of PKs. It grew in player base for a few years after that.

What killed it was AoS. Next to ToA the most idiotic expansion pack in the history of MMORPGs. They completely revamped the armor system, added really overpowering skills and weapons, and began a one way unstoppable trip down a track of adding more and more ridiculously powerful uber bosses and compensating for it with more and more insane weapons.

Right now you can be an archer and if your bow is "balanced" and has "spell channeling" you can chug potions and cast spells while simultaneously shooting arrows. And they added "repeating crossbows" which shoot arrows like a machine gun. LOL. And tamers can tame greater dragons and then train them up in skills and stats to be something like 800 hit points and, to top it off, if the dragon is a pet long enough, it becomes "bonded" and if it dies it follows you as a ghost and can be resurrected. As a result, the new player logs on to see everybody around him decked out in 20-200 million in armor and weapons and jewelry that can't be lost because AoS necessitated the addition of "item insurance" meaning you don't ever lose anything you have. That new player, by the way, still starts off with just 1,000 gold, a torch, and a blank book.

AoS turned UO into an item-based game where instead of grinding for levels you grind for gold to buy the crazy expensive uber items everybody else has. And once you have them you get to sit around on your ass cause all you've ever known is covetting and working towards thos euber items. It's like capitalism gone wrong.

I guess I look at UO:R as the beginning of the end. Sure it spiked subs for a while, but Trammel completely negated the need for almost anything crafted. I couldn't PvP in UO worth a damn so naturally I was excited about Trammel at first. (Even dropped a castle on opening day) It didn't take long though to realize that the no-risk environment was killing the economy though. (An economy that managed to survive numerous dupe bugs over the years) No matter how awesome it might be to have a house and tons of cash, having it all in a no risk land stripped the very soul out of UO imo.

Mortal Online and Darkfall look like they are on the right path to get another "UO" out there, but since no other company has come close in 10+ years, I'm not holding by breath.

You're exactly right. I played UO since pre-release, and it was undoubtedly the best MMO ever made to date. And when they announced Trammel, I was skeptical like everyone else, but I went ahead and bought a big house deed and scrambled to place it. Within a day or two I realize that UO was done for. Fellucia was dead in no time. Trammel had an artificial influx of players, but they were trying to have their cake and eat it to by enjoying a world predicated on risk without the risk.

I just signed up for a 14 day trial of UO last week to give it a shot. I was not impressed. First I tried out Seige Perilous, the supposedly "hard core" UO server. But so many things have changed now. There are ninjas and paladins and all sorts of strange skills and classes, and yet there's basically one archtype that everyone fits into in order to PvP. Back in my day everyone had a chance at PvP. But part of the hard core nature of Siege Perilous is that NPC vendors don't buy anything from players at all. That puts players in a very very hard spot if they want to become a crafter (one of the great joys of early UO) because they have basically 0 income until they reach 100 in their craft. Also, due to the strange ruleset on Siege Perilous, I was repeatedly PKed by a red (murderer) at the Britain West Bank. There were very few people there.

So I decided to give my old server, Chesapeake a try. Off I go to the Britain West Bank (always the most populous, bustling location in the world in my day) and I find it absolutely empty. I ask where everyone is on a message board, and they tell me that everyone hangs out in some new expansion zone now. But it was obvious to me that UO is dead now. There are very, very few players remaining, and most of those people don't have any idea what UO is supposed to be about.

UO took the path of appeasement by catering to whiners. They took away the risk of dying, the risk of losing your stuff, then they made stuff more important AND easier to get, and everything just spiraled out of control. The economy is stagnant. People have hundreds of million of gold... it's all ruined.

If they would launch a server with the exact ruleset and game design as UO was shortly after launch, I think it would enjoy immense success. I'd pay to play it. Sure I used to break things in my office when I'd get gunned down by a group of PKs and lose everything I spent the day aquiring. But I also remember how excited I was to get a magic weapon identified and find that it was a silver katana of vanquishing (or whatever.) It was easy come easy go. And I seriously doubt we'll ever see such a well thought out, but simple game world again.

 

[drebo]

I recently tried out UO again, as well. It was fun for about a month, and then I remembered how futile it was to try and get ahead in that game. I've got a 7x GM crafter and I have to resort to doing BoDs because no one wants the crap that you can make (well, unless you can farm the REALLY rare components and have lots of magic tools).

If they brought back a server just after T2A was released, I would join back up in a heart beat. That was the absolute funnest time I ever had. It was a difficult game that offered a variety of different play-styles and unique challenges.

I've always been a fan of skill-based games over character class games, and UO definitely got it right initially.

UO:R was the end of the game as it brought with it power hour, guaranteed gain system, and no risk. With the first two, gaining skill became to easy. With the last one, the economy imploded.

Oh well.

 

[natep]

Any game that places more power to well crafted items than drops can have a good crafting system, because it encourages the people who don't want to craft into participating. UO was like this, and also had fully lootable corpses, so getting a cheap but effective item was the way to go. Bind on Pickup are the newer solutions to making all new players need new gear, but it doesn't quite work as well. I went back to EQ2 and noticed that most high geared low level characters have crafted items, so it must be working to some degree there.

An ideal crafting system would be where teh uber equipment almost never drops, but unique crafting components drop instead, which someone of high enough crafting skill would know how to use upon seeing. Add in maker's marks, rewards for crafting legendary items, etc.

 

[Bateluer]

No MMO will ever get crafting 'right' for a very simple reason. If the developers make the crafting process challenging, unique, as well as making crafted items actually valuable, then you'd have all 10m WoW junkies ranting about how hard and imbalanced crafting is. If they make it too simple and have every dropped item better than the crafted items, then nobody really bothers to craft aside from from spamming brokers and merchants for cheap coins.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: darkeneddays
I guess I look at UO:R as the beginning of the end. Sure it spiked subs for a while, but Trammel completely negated the need for almost anything crafted. I couldn't PvP in UO worth a damn so naturally I was excited about Trammel at first. (Even dropped a castle on opening day) It didn't take long though to realize that the no-risk environment was killing the economy though. (An economy that managed to survive numerous dupe bugs over the years) No matter how awesome it might be to have a house and tons of cash, having it all in a no risk land stripped the very soul out of UO imo.

Mortal Online and Darkfall look like they are on the right path to get another "UO" out there, but since no other company has come close in 10+ years, I'm not holding by breath.

It's hard to tell. I tend to also think UOR, had AoS not even come out, might have killed UO. But the reality is that people like choice. It's what you're seeing in games like DAOC and WAR and WoW. When you were UO and you were the only show in town and people would tolerate the PvP until they grew to appreciate it, you could get away with all or nothing. Case in point, how many of you tried Shadowbane? It had wide open PvP and, even after they got the technical bugs worked out, it couldn't keep a large enough subscriber base.

But the fact is that AoS is the point at which UO began a gradual uninterrupted drop in subscribers. The game is still profittable so it's going nowhere, but the resources devoted to new publishes and expansion packs and marketing are dwindling with the subscribers to maintain that profittability creating a vicious cycle.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
No MMO will ever get crafting 'right' for a very simple reason. If the developers make the crafting process challenging, unique, as well as making crafted items actually valuable, then you'd have all 10m WoW junkies ranting about how hard and imbalanced crafting is. If they make it too simple and have every dropped item better than the crafted items, then nobody really bothers to craft aside from from spamming brokers and merchants for cheap coins.

I'm telling you, UO has it really good right now with their runic crafting. It's a good balance of crafters making some insane stuff, but dropped items also being hot commodities.

 

[xboxist]

Crafting in WoW is lame because the items that can be made are quickly outclassed by the items you can loot while raiding, or by doing PvP/arena. The crafted gear that was made available in the Burning Crusade was pretty badass at release. But after a few content patches (more dungeons and more arena seasons), the crafted gear was neglected and no one needs that crap anymore.

 

[Nebor]

Originally posted by: drebo
If they brought back a server just after T2A was released, I would join back up in a heart beat. That was the absolute funnest time I ever had. It was a difficult game that offered a variety of different play-styles and unique challenges.

Yup. Without a doubt the best game I've ever played. The highs were high, the lows were infuriating. It was all things to all people.

 

[AlexAL]

Try ATITD. It is on Tale 3 now, with tale 4 starting maybe the end of this year. It is practically all crafting, with no combat. The game has some fantastic features, and if it does not turn you off the first day it will probably mesmerize for at least 3 months. Negatives with the game are the small group of developers that are sometimes too slow to fix certain bugs or implement certain parts of the game. Also, those who begin early in the game have distinct advantages in certain areas of the game. But what is new about that.

My 2c.

http://wiki.atitd.net/tale3

 

[ElFenix]

T2A was fantastic.

i played UO starting just after i finished ff7 (my roommate played UO while watching me play ff7). i kept the account even after uo:r basically ruined the thing (it was fun to log into the pk side and just sit and chat with the pks i helped as noobs). but i didn't play it anywhere near as much as i had in 98 and 99.


unfortunately EQ was the larger commercial success, mostly because it was 3D and carebear (and it may have been less buggy, UO didn't go gold until a year after it's release), so every subsequent game has basically been an EQ clone. item and raid driven.


are there any popular UO renegade servers with good populations and t2a rulesets?