Lately, MMO developers seem to regard crafting systems as a way for players to just make things for themselves more than being a vehicle for servicing fellow players. I would like to see a return to an Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxies approach to crafting where we can make things thate service a wide variety of players and not just ourselves. ZOS has mentioned that they've got a lot of cool social elements they want to include. Well I hope that a community-oriented crafter's market is part of that.

For claritt's sake, when I say I want to see a Star Wars Galaxies approach to crafting, I do not mean I want to see a millian variations of resources each with different stats. Some tout that as SWG's crowning achievement. I call it an exercise in over-complication. What I mean is that I want to be able to craft things that always have a use. I want to see a system where gear degrades through use and can be repaired easily enough, but if neglected it could break and need replacing... So in other words, I want a player-driven economy.

I hear some of you screaming "NOOOOOOO. I'll never buy from greedy crafters who want to charge an arm and a leg for a sword!!!"

Well... first, let me just say that if non-crafters who happen to gather some resources that crafters need would stop charging an arm and a leg for those resources, the crafters would not have to factor heavy spending on needed components into their price for the finished product. so-called greedy crafters' prices on SWG were driven up by greedy hunters who charged an arm and a leg for materials that only they could acquire. So I say the community influence macro-inflation by practicing micro-inflation...

Having said that, I do believe that a mechanism should be in place to control player pricing.

There are NPC vendors. Let them serve as the backbone for trade in towns. If I go to a vendor and sell a sword I made, he would pay me X for it. He would then sell it for Y where Y=X*4. So he buys the sword from me for 60 gold, then turns around and sells it for 240 gold. And where does it show up? On the Exchange/Auction House/whatever.

See playing the exchange is a gamble. Not everything one posts is a guaranteed sale, or at least it is not guaranteed to sell the first time you post it. So those looking for a quick cash-in might want to consider selling to an NPC vendor.

If the NPC pays 60 for my sword and then sells it for 240 on the exchange, then a baseline price for that item is established. Others looking to sell the same thing would do well to post it on the exchange for a price somewhere between 60 and 240, thus making more off of selling on the exchange and keeping the price under control. Nothing would stop a player from setting a price higher than what the vendor's exchange price would be, but the likelihood of making a sale when the item is offered for a lesser price would become slimmer. A fair market price would be established without forcing a pricing limit on players.

Looted items must also be equal to what a player can craft. Maybe not so much for epic gear which should remain an exclusive reward for completing epic achievements. But for common gear used along the way, what I find in my travels should be equal in stat to what can be crafted. In this way, a non-crafter would have a choice concerning obtaining new gear... Just hope he can randomly find what he wants, or order something specific from a crafter... And if the crafter is worth his salt, he'll charge fairly for it. Nobody should be forced to buy from a crafter, but at the same time a crafter should not worry that his wares will be useless...

I hope craftign of all sorts is meaningful. I have some hope for two reasons: Crafting in TES has been meaningful. Crafting in DAOC was meaningful; it paid to be a high level crafter.

I really hope they work to make it fun and interesting, too. And I hope a crafter's skill isn't tied to his level.

Maybe they'll give some details on their plans at E3!

I see you have put some thought into this.....and I like the idea. It reminds me of the market in WoW, and that is pretty successful. I dont know if youve played Runescape, but they have this thing called the grand exchange. I think every RPG?MMO should copy this idea. It allows you to put items into exchange boxes and a certain price(it is inicially set depending on the item, but can be inflated or deflated to increase sale rates) and left there until someone else places an order for that item for that same price or lower, and their money is deposited for it. Most sales are sold and bought instantly as you place an order for the item or place the item, but it can stay for days until sold.

I really hope crafting is where you get the top tier gear. It would be cool if they had something like spell crafting in daoc where you could add your own stats to a player crafted piece. It made for a huge range of diversity. However, I have a feeling that would be too compex for most ppl. Remember, they are trying to please everyone and not upset any players. Who even knows if stats will even be in the game. I DO NOT want WoWs gear setup. I dont want to raid PvE for weeks to get one piece of an armor set that everyone else has and looks exactly the same. Same goes for pvp gear.

I look forward to a crafting system that adds difficulty and rewards challenging risk. Something fun that addicts will drool over. But I do wonder, not many people would have need of anything an armorer would make at low level. (how common is an iron dagger?) Alchemy, maybe, you can never have enough potions. But you probably won't turn a profit off that anvil until you're smithing with silver ingots, I think.

I don't 100% agree. The top-most gear should alway come from completing epic-level content in the form of something the boss or whatever possesses. Otherwise, there will be a huge chunk of players who will insist that there's no reason to do that content. I know. It's stupid. But as shocking as it may seem to some of us, there are MMO players who only care about rollplaying and don't give a rip about roleplaying. They won't care about the story, or the boss character's background or whatever. To them, he'll just be a mob to kill and another loot grab bag.

So what should happen is that everything but the absolute best in slot gear be craftable, with the best in slot stuff being the high-end quest loot.
THEN, when the first expansion comes out and introduces new best-in-slot gear, the previous BIS gear gets a craftable equivilant. This way, the gear junkies will always have something new to strive for. The crafters will always have stuff to make which can carry their customes all the way through. And the story enthusiasts will have new chapters of story to experience. Everyone wins.


I think that doing it like Skyrim does it would be good. You've got normal baseline gear for every tier. Then you have a refined version. An Iron Dagger is one thing, but a Fine Iron Dagger is a little better. Maybe it does a little more damage, or is a little more durable.

I know I said that looted and crafted gear should be equal with each other, crafted gear could be superior in that refined gear never drops as loot. That way, technically the looted stuff is always potentially the best... It would just take a crafter's services to unlock its true potential.


I agree with you.

Regarding statted gear, I think that it is going to be inevitable. There's only so much that can be done with base-line values associated with gear durring an MMO's run before some other way is employed to set it apart from lower-level or earlier gear.

The good news is, if I recall correctly, there is not going to be special gear for PvP. People will PvP using gear they get from PvE sources.

Well, like I said above, an Iron Dagger might be common. But a Fine Iron Dagger, achievable only by a crafter who refines a regular Iron Dagger, would be superior in some way, either damage or durability, or both. Refined gear would ideally never occur as loot. That should bladesmiths viable even at the earliest stage of the game. Now a player can get by with just a regular Iron Dagger, sure. But if he is one of those who just HAS to have the absolute best at all times, he's going to need to see a crafter.

Now let's think about the mechanic for that shall we? Finding a crafter might be a pain as there is no way to guarantee one will be online or available at any given time. So you go to a blacksmith NPC to have your Iron Dagger improved to a Fine Iron Dagger. The NPC takes your dagger and will "have one of his people take care of it." He would ask how long the player is willing to allow for the job, The options being one, two or three days. You can check back at any time to see if the job has been done. I would log in with my crafter and check with the blacksmith NPC to see if there is any work. I'd be given tasks in the order received. I would never physically touch your dagger (no opportunity for theft), but would be the one to actually improve it for you. Of course, if you do see me working the forge, you can come up to me and request a weapon improvement. I'd get an alert that you are requesting it, and could take on the task right there while you wait. Instead of the dagger going into my inventory, and improvement interface would appear. You put the dagger in it, I name the price, you say OKAY, and I do the job.

Of course, I can always refined any unrefined gear in my inventory as well.

I love that system! Eliminating the possibility of theft is key! And players should be able to work toward improving their own skill or pay someone else to do it instead. Good thinkin'!

I like this idea. most sandbox style games have a strong emphasis on crafting and a player driven economy. Sandbox usually focusses on a never-ending gear chase. I really dislike the WoW style of gear chase nowadays as the game has devolved into a never ending chase for better gear.

The whole 3 faction RvR thing suggests to me that the economy should be driven by resources that disappear at a steady pace. I mean, a battering ram should cost quite a bit in terms of materials. It should not be useable forever. It's quality should degrade over time. Also, the faction in control of Cyrodil should possibly get some sort of a bonus in their resource production. Not too big though or it will unbalance the economy and the whole RvR concept and not too small or people would not want to chase after it.

Allow crafters to repair gear, but eventually it will end up beyond useless. Yeah I know it will svck when that nifty +5 Longsword of daedra slaying is no longer useable but hey! I can always get another.

I really have no issue with crafters being able to craft best-in-slot gear, provided there is sufficient complexity involved. Im imagining, say a daedric sword...has to be crafted out of daedric ore by a weapon-smith, then refined into it's purest state, then enchanted by an enchanter able to cast the spell that you would want on the sword.

Personally, I think people ought to be able to obtain equivalent gear via the means they choose to play. If I want to raid, then that's fine. I am guaranteed to get good gear. But that crafter staying up to the wee hours, working, providing for the war effort ought to be just as viable as killing some ridiculously over-sized and usually over-scripted end-game boss. And pvp gear should be equivalent to pve gear imo. The dumbest thing WoW ever did was introduce resilience as a pvp only stat that forced people to grind another set of gear before they could even begin to enjoy pvp. Let me re-iterate, all gear should be functionally equivalent regardless of how it is obtained. Mmo designers have got to learn to stop penalizing players for playing the game the way they want to play it.

I really like the ideas regarding possible crafting interfaces though. The game ought to stream-line ways to request or obtain the services of a crafter.

separating PVP gear from PVE is one of the things that make wow lame

also the crafting AIN"T ALL THAT .....

its basically a grind to get the the best items, which are turned to crap by dungeon/pvp gear ...honestly

I think siege weapons should definitely have to be crafted. This would make crafting even more valuable.

I don't want people to start comparing games and take what I'm about to say out of context, but...

Anyone ever played Borderlands? There are literally, (yes literally), millions, (yes, millions), of weapons in that game. The vast array of armory makes every find potentially interesting. The problem being that so many options leads to lots of time in the menu comparing gear, and most items aren't as good as what you currently use. "crap, crap, crap, uber-crap...ooh...uh...nope, crap...".

But the positives, (and I'm not saying we necessarily need millions of weapons), make the game really interesting, new, and exciting. If there were a more diverse choice of equipment in the Elder Scrolls Online than we've seen in Skyrim or even Morrowind, I think the game would profit immensely! With crafting simply being another way to create, or just improve, upon everything out there.

The best benefit I can foresee with this arrangement is that players wouldn't always carry the same gear. You wouldn't have every player from lvl 12-15 playing with either a silver sword, silver axe or silver claymore...etc. Then past lvl 15 you graduate to the part of the game where everyone your level uses a glass weapon, no. If the weapons can be refined (fine or flawless iron dagger) they will be. No one would ever consider using a weapon which wasn't. That's the only reason I see not to put it in...it'd really be just another money sink

With a diversity of gear you have more of a sense of individuality, like what you've got is something special, not something everyone else has. This theme is echoed all throughout TES, you're the hero. The only thing that separates the players set ups for a certain level shouldn't be their class and which enchantment they put on their weapons, but the weapons themselves...did I get my point across clearly?

Hrmm...I think an idea just came to me. How about this..I can farm for a specific piece of gear that drops in dungeon x off of mob y. Or, I really want a fine-tuned piece of gear made just for me. This is where the crafter comes in. He can take a known piece of gear and modify it in a number of way, from the base stats, to the particle effects on it, and possibly even the mesh or color for the gear. Or he can achieve the same thing via a series of crafting techniques that make and refine the piece of gear from the raw ore he started with.

In effect, you start off with a basic weapon obtained in any way the game allows, crafting, pve, or pvp, and then modify its basic design to suit you. So for instance, let's say I just got this cool one-handed mace off of a mob drop in some dungeon. I take it to my favorite weapon crafter. From there, I am able to modify it's stats. Let's say the mace had wisdom on it when the stat I really want it strength. We are all fairly familiar with this concept from reforging specialists in most modern mmo's. So I modify wisdom to strength. Then I select the particle effect I would like on it, similar to eq2's particle reforging system. Then I can apply a color from a preselected pallete of colors (some folks just hate the idea of hot pink armor in a TES game), and finally I can choose a mesh from say all of the one-handed mace meshes available in the game.

Each step involves needing some obtainable resource to make the necessary adjustment. These resources can be bartered in the in-game economy. And if in fact, I want to craft the mace, I will need a number of refining steps to get the mace up to the top-notch quality that will hold enchantments. Whether crafting it from scratch or refining a dropped item, or simply changing it's look, it all requires resources. All of this could presumably apply to siege engines as well. They could have more than one mesh, etc.

Said resources eventually disappear from the system also, if some reasonable item decay system is put into place. One of the big problems with crafters and mmo's is that resources, once obtained, seem to rarely go away. Things need to disappear from the world in order to achieve any sort of sensible economy.

Hrmm...I think an idea just came to me. How about this..I can farm for a specific piece of gear that drops in dungeon x off of mob y. Or, I really want a fine-tuned piece of gear made just for me. This is where the crafter comes in. He can take a known piece of gear and modify it in a number of way, from the base stats, to the particle effects on it, and possibly even the mesh or color for the gear. Or he can achieve the same thing via a series of crafting techniques that make and refine the piece of gear from the raw ore he started with.

In effect, you start off with a basic weapon obtained in any way the game allows, crafting, pve, or pvp, and then modify its basic design to suit you. So for instance, let's say I just got this cool one-handed mace off of a mob drop in some dungeon. I take it to my favorite weapon crafter. From there, I am able to modify it's stats. Let's say the mace had wisdom on it when the stat I really want it strength. We are all fairly familiar with this concept from reforging specialists in most modern mmo's. So I modify wisdom to strength. Then I select the particle effect I would like on it, similar to eq2's particle reforging system. Then I can apply a color from a preselected pallete of colors (some folks just hate the idea of hot pink armor in a TES game), and finally I can choose a mesh from say all of the one-handed mace meshes available in the game.

Each step involves needing some obtainable resource to make the necessary adjustment. These resources can be bartered in the in-game economy. And if in fact, I want to craft the mace, I will need a number of refining steps to get the mace up to the top-notch quality that will hold enchantments. Whether crafting it from scratch or refining a dropped item, or simply changing it's look, it all requires resources. All of this could presumably apply to siege engines as well. They could have more than one mesh, etc.

Said resources eventually disappear from the system also, if some reasonable item decay system is put into place. One of the big problems with crafters and mmo's is that resources, once obtained, seem to rarely go away. Things need to disappear from the world in order to achieve any sort of sensible economy.

Why are people always so excited about crafting in an MMO when its only about gathering the right resources and AFKing while you make 9999 of the same items?

When i was a newbie to MMOs, i thought crafting meant actually making stuffs out or raw materials into items of your own design.
Example: Armor that has special stats that you personally made. Eg: You could have an armor that had 5 stacks of +STR etc.

Ever try Vanguard?

Well when the crafted items are actually good it makes crafting useful and helps strengthen the community.

On a side note, I really hope armor is dyeable like in DAoC.

I could see a paint covers, but how does one mix smelted ebony ore with dye?

Nope. How does it work?
Also was there crafting in DaOC? How did the system look like?

Not the typical gather right amounts of resources and AFKing to make 9999 of the same items rite?

hard for me to look up and link things from my phone but google crafting in Vanguard.

It was pretty much that, but crafted items had potential to be the best gear in the game. Especially later when spellcrafting came out and you could add specific stats to pieces. You could create your own template tailored to your class. Crafting was also needed to make siege weapons in early DAoC. (rams, trebuchets, scorpions, etc)

Hmm.. this page here is pretty detailed. Quite interesting tho.
http://wiki.silkyvenom.com/index.php/Crafting

I didn't actually played Vanguard tho, so im not sure if its the typical MMO style crafting in actual gameplay.

Crafting to make siege weapons sounds cool.
Hopefully we don't have 9999 people AFKING in the castle crafting 9999 battlerams. So lame. So lame.

Anyway my dream idea of crafting in an MMO is this:

If a person is dedicated to do crafting, he/she can gain different styles and designs of the physical designs of an armor
like how they do for Banner Designs in Diablo 3 now. The more achievements you get, the more designs you can unlock.

An extremely dedicated and high leveled crafter can even take existing Epic Drops and add additional stats and design.

So this is what will happen:

Lets say someone got an Epic "Mannimarco Robe" drop from Mannimarco's raid.
He brings it to an extremely high level dedicated crafter, who can modify how it looks physically thru 50 different combinations and designs, and add additional attributes to it.

So, even though alot of people may have Mannimarco Robe that was dropped, everyone of them would look unique and have different stats.

Therefore, a crafted item will ALWAYS be better then an Epic Drop (or different depending on what kind of stat and how u modify it. but it will be super difficult to modify
an existing epic drop), but will never be as good as a Legendary Drop. (Which should be super super super rare, like maybe only have 1 or 2 in the whole server.).

Yes, yes point at me and laugh. But thats how i thought crafting was when i was first introduced to MMOs.
The key thing is to have a UNIQUE look designed by the crafter.

That would be sweet.