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.