Lets get serious about crafting.

[Fetchi]

What we need:

We need a crafting engine that other games like SWG, Eve, LTRO, and Wow will drool over. Seriously, not having crafting in D&D is almost like not having dragons. One of the biggest complaints players have is customizing the look of their character or changing the color of their armor. Players have begged for things like armor dyes since beta. Seeing the same old armor and weapon templates combined with the advent of Dragon Touched armor and the Minos Legens helmet have made uniqueness even more important; even epic items still use the same old skins. A good crafting engine can address many of these concerns.

Why we need it:

• Crafting enables players to differentiate their equipment and avatar from the rest of the player base.
• Crafting gives players that enjoy customization and appearance a fun time sink
• Crafting can help balance the economy through trading and selling
• Crafting can provide endless creativity for players
• I’m sure people can think of other good reasons why crafting is important to an MMO

What we don’t need:

• Crafting should not require too much grinding/harvesting for materials

The number one reason games have failed at crafting is because they make it too tedious to even begin. No one wants to spend hours and days farming ingredients (i.e. power shards). Grinding is not fun and never will be. An MMO does not need grinding to be successful.

• Crafting should not be a hassle to manage

Limited pack/storage space and a poor “save feature” to come back to an item you were working on can make things frustrating. Also, too many materials or crafting components can become a nightmare. We already have to keep up with scales, stones, shrapnel, arrowheads, chains, shards, fungus, funk, vials of pure water, ect. We need to use the materials we currently have, and make them easy to manage.

• Crafting should not have limited customization or options

Creating a great crafting engine but limiting me to 5 colors will just tick me off. The entire concept is customization, and you can never have too many options.

• Crafting should not be a complicated experience

This is another reason other games have failed. Crafting should require some thought, but we shouldn’t have to read 20 pages on the forums, consult an expert, or formulate a blueprint to make an item.

• Crafting should not require guilds or other players

We should be able to craft using the materials and plat we have gathered on our adventures and we shouldn’t need a guild or an airship to be able to craft.

• Crafting should not require character expertise

We shouldn’t have to spend feats or enhancements or build a “crafting character” just to craft.

• Crafting should not take away from dungeon crawling

Being in the quest is the corner stone of the game. Crafting should compliment the questing experience, not take away from it. Crafting should be something to do when wanting to spend some time on your gear and toon, waiting for the next adventure to begin.

• Crafting should not overshadow rare in game items and raid/epic items

No explanation needed here.

The main focus for me:

I would like the ability to create different looking armor, shields, and weapons easily. The best crafting engine I have used was Neverwinter Nights (and even that was pretty elementary). I could create armor and weapons piece by piece. A drop down menu would allow me to change any aspect of the item. If I wanted to change the left shoulder piece, it gave me a list of different styles to choose from. The same for the right shoulder piece, it didn’t have to be the same as the left. There were drop down menus for the chest piece, waist piece, left and right leg pieces, shin guards, and even boots. There were dozens of designs for each piece to choose from, giving me hundreds of different looks quickly and easily. You could also change the colors of various pieces of the armor making it very fun to create new sets.

This was also done with all of the weapons. You could change everything on a sword from the blade shape, the piece that separates the blade from the grip (not sure what this is called), to hilt with various colors and styles. Bows could also be done with different shapes and colors.

Perhaps with shields we could incorporate different styles and logos. Allow guilds to create a symbol or flag they could stamp on their armor/shield for differentiation besides letters above the avatar. I’m rambling on here and going overboard, but you have to in order to separate yourself from other games. This is DDO, the possibilities should be endless, and crafting is not where we should drop the ball.

[Alabore]

+1.

I signed other petitions for gear customisation.
I'll sign this one.

[Fetchi]

Thanks Alabore.

The developers have already hinted at implementing a feature to change the look of your gear.

I'm really concerned about the way I think they are going to do it.

I bet they are going to make us put our dragon touched armor into the alter with another suit of armor that we want it to look like with an ingredient and poof, your dragon touched armor now looks like the other armor you put in with it.

I hope this is not the extent of their creativity. I will be greatly disappointed.

[ArichValtrahn]

Great ideas. Id prefer to see existing crafting systems fixed before new ones are added, though.

[cdbd3rd]

Always enjoy +repping a good post and watching the poster's lil green thing get bigger.


Well presented OP, Fetchi.


Hopefully you won't pull too much agro from folks missing your point by being distracted by your comparison-usage of those 'other' games.

(I do enjoy LOTRO for the fishing/crafting, and ALMOST subbed to WoW for a little while because of the fishing there. )
I don't ever want DDO to become those other games - but some of the things they did, they did right.

[Khanyth]

I agree with a lot of what you said. Especially the customization.

Nevertheless, for me, so long as the gear is worth it in the end, so too is the grind.

There should be a pleasure in the pain and the means justifying the end

[Internetisrsbsn]

I absolutely agree. If I want to make a paladin with a pink power ranger suit, I should be able too. :/

[Khanyth]

I absolutely agree. If I want to make a paladin with a pink power ranger suit, I should be able too. :/

Go nekkid :>

Just keep that great sword sheathed ;>

[Alabore]

The developers have already hinted at implementing a feature to change the look of your gear.

Aye, I think I got a glimpse at that particular hint, but it was before they added new hats.

I'm watching existing gear for insight, and I am starting to think there are some recurring combinations - so we might have some trouble customising suits to the individual plate or pouch.

Existing petitions do mention a request for some kind of advanced customisation.
We are concerned about a work-around solution offering only pre-built outfits.
Viability is yet to be determined.

If I could make requests, I'd ask for complete post-creation control over customisation: such as changing character appearance, hairdos and so on.
I would suggest incorporating existing hair tonics as part of an expanded "hair-dresser" feature.
Yes, I just wished for an in-game hair-dresser.
Buy a hair tonic from store, and it becomes available as a repeated use option in your hair-dresser menu.

Same with unlockable gear; buy tokens or unlock via quests or favour, and you'll be able to wear crests from houses, commemorative vests, nobility tabards and so on.
Lvl 20 chars look positively mundane.
Cyan wraps...?
Is *cyan* the mark of epic...?
One of my favourite pieces of equipment is ML6, and stops being viable around lvl 8.

We could have options for actual customisation/crafting of gear, so personalised appearance stays with the individual bit of equipment.
Or even, an option for buying/crafting gear in personalised colours/shapes; guild-specific armour anybody?

Again, limit here is not player imagination.
Limit is in-game viability vs coding time.

...

Sigh...
An Alabore can only dream.

[Internetisrsbsn]

Go nekkid :>

Just keep that great sword sheathed ;>

I don't get naked for free.

[iamsamoth0]

Fallen Earth?
Needless to say the crafting element in that was HUGE. At least a thousand different materials to work with. While it was versatile and intriguing it was a lot to handle. And the inventory maintenance was almost overwhelming. We already have all the basics, and more than enough extraneous miscellaneous items in(this) game.
If they could devise creative ways to use what we have to create simple items. Because in research money is spent, and experience is earned. We don't have to allow folks to abuse it by making the research cheap, or the product less expensive than what vendors carry. Because some people would do it just to do it. If that, then consider me
/signed

[Alabore]

We don't have to allow folks to abuse it by making the research cheap, or the product less expensive than what vendors carry. Because some people would do it just to do it.

Stray musing: collectables already allow players to get free gear.
Gathering and combining collectables requires time and resources.
Crafting via collectables should not cost significant resources beyond initial expenditure of time.
The above should help in preventing a trivialisation of crafting without turning it into all-out grinding.

[AestorTheKnight]

Thanks for your great post Fetchi! A lot of really good ideas presented there! And I would absolutely love to see the equipment customisation system like the one you described from Never Winter Nights. That would fit DDO perfectly!

Thanks Alabore.

The developers have already hinted at implementing a feature to change the look of your gear.

I'm really concerned about the way I think they are going to do it.

I bet they are going to make us put our dragon touched armor into the alter with another suit of armor that we want it to look like with an ingredient and poof, your dragon touched armor now looks like the other armor you put in with it.

I hope this is not the extent of their creativity. I will be greatly disappointed.

Yes - these are my MAJOR concerns too!

At present the Devs have commented that future appearance customisation will be provided by means of "Cosmetic Items" and they have added a couple of them to the game already. The Bunny Hat, 3 Cornered Hat etc.

The thing is I dont think they are going to give us the option to change the appearance of our Dragontouched Armour by placing it in an altar with another set of Armour, so the DT then aquires the others appearance. Because with all the many and various generic and static armour skins in the game, that method would actually be a step in the right direction. To make your DT look like Emerald Guard for example would actually be quite good. It would be a start at least.

My fear is they are not even going to do that. That all they are gonna do is add 1 or 2 Exclusive armour designs to the store each update, that work like Cosmetic Items, and apply a "new" exclusive appearance to your armour.
But this is not Customisation at all. Its the complete rubbish route of "Buy your appearance from the DDO store". The main problem being that this will offer a totally limited number of new appearances, in the exact same way you now see hundreds of people wearing silver Bunny Hats. And thats not customisation - thats clonification.

I too, as you have suggested, want an appearance customisation system, that allows us to definitely choose our characters Armour, Shield, Helmet and Weapon appearances and colours.

Being able to apply any of the Armour, Shield, Helmet, Weapon appearances already in game to any of our equipment. To mix and match the Armour "Over Skins" and "Under Skins" and to choose their colour - IE utilise any and all of the possibilities already existing in DDO would be good enough for me at the moment.

But of course, there is sooooo much more you can do with Customisation than that and more options should definitely be added! Unique Shield Crests are something I would love to see!

[AestorTheKnight]

Again, limit here is not player imagination.
Limit is in-game viability vs coding time.

I dont think Armour appearance customisation would be even remotely difficult to Code.

The Game Masters already have the ability to generate any random generic armour appearance, with any colour, within their Suite of Game Tools. Ive seen them do it before my very eyes.

To implement this would be incredibly easy in my oppinion. I have no idea why they havent done it already.

[Chubsta]

I would love to see some more crafting involved in this game. I have yet to used what crafting this game offers, but I have heard it is pretty rudimentary. Of all the mmo's I have played EQ2's was about my favorite. It was a bit more than just clicking buttons and leveling wasn't too bad. Mats were easy to find and you could make some really good gear, not the best, but good.

[Alabore]

The Game Masters already have the ability to generate any random generic armour appearance, with any colour, within their Suite of Game Tools. Ive seen them do it before my very eyes.

I am afraid I'm lost for words.

[Arcticwarrior]

+1

[donfilibuster]

"Crafting should not require too much grinding/harvesting for materials"

While this is correct and desired, lets not forget that crafting had a "component cost" that many DM just obviate in their campaigns.
What is assumed is that there's enough component vendors so that you could rely on the gold value alone.

So by having the crafting you are also expected to have access to the typical and proper facilities like library, laboratory, reagents vendor, etc.
That could be gained on house favor, rented as in the airship, located as in the crafting altars, etc.
You also need masterwork items, spell access, etc. perhaps even the time requirements.

So in absence of a reagents vendor you can go grind for components just like done with the crafting altars.
This 'components' aspect makes the whole crafting altar make sense rules wise, which otherwise keep people complaining it isn't like PnP crafting.

[Akrilus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uohxUbsiA1Y

Enuff said

[Nerate_Mireth]

Great suggestions all around. +1 to the OP and several others.