MMORPG.com and their "top crafting systems"

[C`gan]

http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cf...g-Systems.html

Please feel free to reply and tell them OTHERWISE. Oh, and read the response posts to this one.

[Veruliyam]

Interesting how many said "I've played X game and therefore think its crafting system is best."

I've played Horizons and Ryzom. I like both.

[Chasing]

*Chuckles* I read the MMORPG.com post this morning before I even looked at the Istaria forums (I get daily new feeds from various sources).

I started looking at the thread replies and my initial thought was. Oh, looks like Virtrium are actually link building (its a core part of something called SEO). Then I realised it was players posting.

C'Gan your post is excellent and effective (the MMORPG.com post)

This will definitely generate more interest in Istaria.

On a side note.
I get the impression that MMORPG.com may not be completely impartial. Certain MMO's get more attention then others, so it makes me wonder what agreements have been made between particular MMO's and MMORPG.com.

[Frith-Rae]

Well having played EQII crafting and this one I didin't post feedback because honestly I don't feel Istaria has the "best crafting."

TO me that means "least amount of grind" and, um..Istaria doesn't fit that. I can't speak for the other games, but EQII is far far far far less grindy for housing things than Istaria. So...well..anyway.

[C`gan]

Having tried Vanguard myself, I have at least a modicum of comparative knowledge of the two systems. While Vanguard's system is in-depth in that each one unit requires several steps to complete beforehand and there is a different grading at the end process, there was a distinct lack of crafter capability when I played. By that, I mean if you had your main and secondary crafting classes (like WoW), that was it. No swapping over to do something else. As I understood their concept for shipbuilding and player housing, at least 6 different people would have to be involved for any one project. No real crafting multiclassing existed. Perhaps that's changed now. I don't know. However, from what I saw, there was no room for a Gengel, Knossos, Thaalia, Murial, Awdz, Heather, or even myself. One could not perform to the top of crafting abilities because of the limitations in needing other crafters to supply goods. I'd certainly take any WorldProjects team in comparison and demonstrate a better form of teamwork.

In Vanguard, each person in the team would have to do the multi-stepped minigame to process raw resources to one useable material, then have to repeat until they had enough usables to warrant making a good. Then with enough goods (assuming they could make the goods and not have to pass that step off to someone else), they could supply them to the next crafter who would put them together.

In Istaria, an effective team for construction is 2 gatherers, 1 processor, 1 runner/placer. Any effective person may be at any point in that team and not be stuck waiting on the person before them to complete. I worked on teams where all 4 were gathering until the processor was full, then as materials went from raw to ready to use, each person traded off their raw materials. Then the processor started handing off finished goods to the first person who traded so they could run and place. So much more efficient.

[Jorev1]

I am certain MMORPG.com is not impartial.

Having once been active on their forums, it became obvious that criticism against certain MMOGs was not tolerated and biased moderators were allowed to protect their pet games.

[Armameteus]

I think it's okay for 'professional' video game critics to have their favorites, but I don't think it should be something that carries over into their supposed 'work', especially if their experience with numerous different games is limited. If that was the case, I may as well just say "Istaria's crafting system is, hands down, the best, out of any crafting MMO I've ever played.

Because, yeah, it's pretty much the only MMO I've ever played that has a crafting system as intuitive as this one to rank as a "crafting game" (or at least that it plays a major role in the overall game).

[Chasing]

I am certain MMORPG.com is not impartial.

Having once been active on their forums, it became obvious that criticism against certain MMOGs was not tolerated and biased moderators were allowed to protect their pet games.

Individual people posting and violating their forum rules was not what I was referring to. Please go back and read what I said again.

[Shian]

Well, out of the crafting systems that I know on that list, (POTBS and Darkfall excluded) I agree with most of their assertions. Personally though, I would kick out EVE. Time based crafting to me was just frustrating. I'd rather grind and feel like I was doing something rather than stare at a timer telling me my item would be ready in 1 day, 4 hours, go play something else until the component was ready. (Where it would then take a further week to make the final product)

[Veruliyam]

Yeah, I saw that for EVE as well, and thought, "You have got to be kidding me?"

It's realistic in that making something does take time. But being able to run off and do something else? A full 180 flip of the coin.

I would love the mere passage of time after making (or buying) cleaning supplies would mean my house gets cleaned, so I could play that much more Horizons!

[Teto Frum]

Horizons crafting certainly belongs on the list for its mechanics and scope, there not being any market for craftwares though probably would be considered by many online crafters a deal breaker keeping it off the list. Most of the games on the list I don't like so havent spend enough time to bash them being on it.

The only crafting personally Ive liked more than Hzs is EQ, EQ2 is still a good set up and the fact rares are truly rare there and knowledge itself fairly rare and no craft multiclassing there is a better than decent market for your wares. No connie limits aid in that no doubt in Eq2.

[Jorev1]

Individual people posting and violating their forum rules was not what I was referring to. Please go back and read what I said again.

No forum rules were violated. Critique is allowed with examples, which I always give. Now how an example is interpreted, as being good or bad, is a personal opinion, like deciding whether something is grind or whether it is a challenge.

I read what you wrote, and understand it as well. I believe some MMOGs on MMORPG.com are protected for financial reasons as well, though neither of us can prove it.

Any legitimate crafting game recommendation list would obviously include both Istaria and Ryzom. Neither of the companies for those games pays for advertising on MMORPG.com though.

[Grogo]

I always feel limited in the crafting systems of most other MMO. While they are correct that the crafting system in EVE is extensive, EVE utilizes a completely different experience system, so it is almost like comparing apples and oranges.

[Dhalin]

I've only played three MMORPGs:

Istaria
FFXI
WoW

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Istaria:

Pros: Don't have to search for hours to find nodes, once you learn where fields are. You go there, and you harvest, and there's very little competition. Also, the recipes aren't too terribly complicated, and the market isn't ridiculously-overpriced. Batch crafting can't be beat; 350 of an item take the same time as 1 item. Not realistic, but a heck of a lot more practical.

Cons: grind grind grind grind grind, spending long hours watching your character dig dig dig dig, it gets boring fast. And then, XP instead of skill levels, means you have to do more for those skill levels. Fill a disk full, drag it back to the machines, process, make... oh wow, I took 15 minutes to gain 5% of a level. Wooo! Too bad it goes up to 100, and bipeds have how many crafting schools, again?

----

FFXI:

Pros: Detailed crafting. Sometimes it is fun going out and getting the different materials, and doing some research into your crafts. Meh, I suppose I had to put SOMETHING in the Pros section.

Edit: Thought of another actual pro: "High-Quality" results. Sometimes, if your level is significantly over the item level (see below), you have a chance (albeit a small one) of getting a High-Quality result. If it was a consumable or crafting material, you'll HQ for More (getting 2, 3 or 4 lumber from cutting a log instead of 1), or if it were an armor, it will have slightly more defense and stats than a normal armor (a Leather Vest +1 has 1 more defense than a Leather Vest), or a weapon that will have slightly more damage and slightly less delay.

Cons: Oh God. Too many to list. The AH rules your life in that game. Every little thing you need, takes Time, Money, or Both and lots of it. Every time you craft something, you need a crystal. Which of the 8 crystals, depends on the item. Some of those crystals are hard to come by, and these crystals take up room in your inventory (which is, at maximum, 80 slots. The crystals stack to a maximum of 12). Each item can comprise of up to 8 materials, and the game goes on a 0.1 system. Meaning when you are trying to level a craft, every time you spin the crystal, you have a chance of gaining a skillup. IF you DO gain a skillup, you might get a 0.1, 0.2 or very rarely a 0.3.. until you reach Level 50. It goes up to 100.

Also, what I -hated- about FFXI, is even if you passed the level of the craft, each item has a level. Let's say I wanted to make, oh, an Iron Sword. That is Blacksmithing. It is considered "Level 25".. so it will grant skill up until you reach Level 25. I'd have to find a Fire Crystal, Two Iron Ingots, and 1 Lizard skin (for the grip I assume).

Iron Ingots are crazy expensive, because iron ore (which is only the -2nd- metal, think Tier 2!) is very rare. One Iron Ingot takes -four- Iron Ores to make; said Iron Ores DO NOT stack. EACH ore takes up 1 slot in your inventory.

Anyways, even if I were level 25 Blacksmithing, I will always have at least a 5% chance to fail the attempt. If I fail, I lose the crystal and have a chance of losing each ingredient (I think a roll is made separately for each item).

So.... yea. FFXI's crafting is over-complicated, ridiculously hard to level, and is generally not profitable whatsoever, unless you're a cook or alchemist.

Moving on to WoW...

WoW, I think, is the best of the three.

It has a very sensible and logical leveling path, all crafts give personal benefits, as well as profit (except for engineering, all engineering stuff you make is for yourself, except for a few guns or scopes).

Each craft has its perk, and the leveling is sensible.

[Raeshlavik]

I'm of a mind that Istaria's crafting is still the best; for the above reasons - but I agree it's a terrible grind most of the time...

The material/manufacturing is upside down as far as the fun factor is concerned as you spend the lion's share of your time digging a resource node or farming a comp and very little actually crafting... The very fact that you can make 350 of something is the indicator of the problem.

As with any function in an MMO, time is the thing that needs to be sunk and the time sink in Istaria's crafting is resource gathering. I'm of the opinion that one load of resource should make at most five of an item, and the time sink should be built into the resource processing rather than running around a resource field digging - an example off the top of my head:

Ignoring techniques and just looking at leveling - lets say that 5% of a crafting level takes 15 minutes. 5 minutes should be gathering, 10 should be processing, and assembly can remain instant to get a good mix of playability and reality.

So you go beat up a resource node for 5 minutes and get a load. You then submit that load to the smelter which takes 10 minutes to actually crush the ore, melt it down, separate the trace materials from the metal you're after, pour it into molds for bars, cool them, and send you a notification that the job is done.

During this time you can happily go about beating up the local wildlife or something else far more interactive than digging... Or more digging if you're so inclined...

Once you get the notification you pick up the load of bars and assemble not 100 things, but 2-3, and get the same exp as you would for the 100 - which reduces market glut and increases the value of each item...

Same time sunk, an intermediate 'holding tank' of craft materials leading to less disc-juggling, same manufacturing steps, improved economy, and way less grind.

Unfortunately this would require an overhaul of the entire crafting process which is hard and requires lots of man hours for a small team... So the grind is probably here to stay.

As for WoW - meh.

Yes, it's easier and far less tedious, but the time sink of it is very obvious. And, in my opinion having leveled them all, all of the crafting classes are generally useless until you reach the level-cap due to the carefully planned wearable and ilevel numbers versus the crap you get from quests/drops and the speed at which you level.

It is actually less efficient to spend the time making a set of crafted armor for yourself than to just go grind wildlife, because it takes less time to out-level the stuff you make than it takes to make it.

Which is part of the whole 'the game doesn't start until level cap' mentality of WoW: you have to be at the level cap to craft anything truly good enough to have an actual market value, which is as-planned to keep the number of max-level acquirable items up. This is so that while you're spending 80% of your game time at the current cap, you still have things to acquire so that you feel like you're progressing... I spent months at level 80 building a darn motorcycle, for example, which I could then sell for exactly the amount of money it cost to build... Pure time sink.

[Dragonboy]

I see many people on both MMORPG.com and in this thread saying that Istaria should have been on the list, but I am sorry I do not agree.

The addition of techniques and the huge amount of different items that are available for crafting might have allowed it in the Top 7 in my opinion, but in my opinion it takes more then a large variation of items to become a real good crafting game.

The dragon lairshaping school makes it due to its complexity and the fact that 75% (if not more) of experience is gained from actually applying the constructed units.

Revamp most biped craft schools to be more like Lairshaping except understandably the gathering schools so that experience is actually given for crafting a speciallity for that school, like spellcrafters for actually crafting a spell, Armorsmiths for armor, Weaponsmiths for weapons and all the building classes for actually applying a unit to a building and then only then will Istaria be worthy to be on a list of best crafting games in my eyes.
The grind of crafting and deconstructing will remain the same for most schools, but for me the whole experience allocation that has been changed makes Istaria more worth of being in that list.

As a side note, having played the adventure side of SWG only up to level 40’ish all I noticed about the crafting part was seeing gathering machines in the freaking middle of no were… Sometimes 5-10 minutes running from the closest player or game controlled town. Always found that a bit weird.

[Frith-Rae]

I'm of a mind that Istaria's crafting is still the best; for the above reasons - but I agree it's a terrible grind most of the time...

I think its one of the best for the vast array of things youc an build - and one of the best for even having the option to build houses/lairs (most games don't).

But the fact that its a terrible grind takes it away from any "best" list to me. The fact that I may dig and harvest for hours upon hours upon hours to even get ONE main item in a list of items required for ONE lair chamber - takes away from the individuallization options on the plots.

To me EQII does it far better. Vast array of items for your home (even if the home itself is prebuilt), the ability to take the vast array of items and arrange them in limitless possibilities to create even more objects, and the fact that NONE of these items takes dozens of hours to make. If I spend an hour crafting in EQII I have a dozen or two new house items to place wherever and however I want.

If I spend an hour crafting in Horizons, I'm lucky if I get 10 applied bricks to my lair.

If that's "what makes it the best", then I vote for more crappy craft systems of the future.

(And honestly to me WoW is crappy in that while it takes no time, it also results in no variety and individuality either outside of a few rare items - but WoW has no housing so to me that's apples and oranges as well).

[Dhalin]

As for WoW - meh.

Yes, it's easier and far less tedious, but the time sink of it is very obvious. And, in my opinion having leveled them all, all of the crafting classes are generally useless until you reach the level-cap due to the carefully planned wearable and ilevel numbers versus the crap you get from quests/drops and the speed at which you level.

I'm guessing it has been awhile since you played?

They changed it very recently (in the last expansion, more so this expansion).

1). All crafts (even gathering ones) give you bonuses beyond simply making equipment. Herbalism gives you a usable healing spell that adds some Haste. Mining gives you +Stamina, which means more health, while Skinning gives you some critical hit. The production crafts give you enchants: Leatherworking allows you to enchant your bracers, Blacksmithing allows you to put sockets (which can be filled with gems that provide stat bonuses) on your gloves and bracers, while Tailoring allows you to enchant your cape, and make your own leg enchants cheaper. Engineering provides many similar enchanting bonuses, along with machines you can use every day. Alchemy, of course, gives you potions that you can drink, as well as transmutations.

2). Regarding i-level: in Cataclysm, crafted items are superior to quested ones, Most of the time, if not all of the time. A Lv80, 81, 82 crafted piece is better than a similar-level quested item, by quite a decent margin. The lv83 crafted I-Level 333 items are better than Lv84 AND 85 items clear up until Heroic Dungeons.

As for time-sink, they improved that too -- you can fly in the Lv1-60 areas which makes gathering a heck of a lot easier, and they increased the spawns for items found there, and they made a few improvements to skinning/leatherworking. It still takes some time, but if you have a decently high level character, it is very do-able and won't claim vast amounts of your time and given the changes I listed above, nearly every craft is beneficial to every character.

It isn't perfect, but Blizz is sure trying to be the best they can be.

As to Istaria's crafting system... it is 99% Grind. Pure Grind. Sure the whole "Forms/Techs" idea is neat and all, you'll spend what, maybe 1% of your in-game time actually making tech'd gear, that's tech'd for your individual needs? For every 5 minutes spent at the anvil/mannequin/whatever, you spent 5+ hours gathering materials and tech comps.

I think I'm going to stick to my opinion that watching my character Auto-Run and Auto-Dig just plain isn't fun when done in copious amounts that Istaria demands for you to get any sizable XP, unless you power-level crafts. But to PL a craft, you have to get at least one of them (preferably Blacksmithing) to 100 first.

[Frith-Rae]

think I'm going to stick to my opinion that watching my character Auto-Run and Auto-Dig just plain isn't fun when done in copious amounts that Istaria demands for you to get any sizable XP

XP AND for "sizeable plot results".

I can coinfirm its just not FUN at all. Because when I'm doing it, I always make sure I have other things to do at the same time - I alttab out to read forums, paying bills (yes paying bills is more fun than digging people...), SOMETHING else to do besides just run and dig and run and dig, combine into bricks, rinse repeat 3-5 times to get one load of applicable lair pieces, to get..ooh I got 5 units on my lair piece! (yea?)

About as fun as logging out of eve waiting on skills to gain. Only difference is you can LEAVE EVE and go do other htings, with Istarian crafting you're still stuck in your computer chair with your butt going numb..

[Uunruk]

I never did give much weight to "Top X" posts. They're too opinionated for me to get any information out of them. This one isn't much different. And on top of that, how many MMORPGs did the original author actually play before creating this list?

UO should definitely be up there. It has a very good crafting system.

Istaria should be up there as well. Istaria has, to me, one of the best crafting systems of any of the games I've played. I think it even beats out UO, although it's a close race for varying reasons. As far as Istaria's crafting being a grind goes, I've never really considered resource gathering to be a grind. I always found it to be part of the crafting process.

While WoW's system had a lot of different things you could craft, it loses out on being a great system because you cannot be JUST a crafter. In fact, the patterns and such aren't even useable unless you have a certain level first, and you can't level the character by crafting.